Competitors looked for ways to improve security and better support sensitive health data on a type of server designed for interoperability.
A healthcare technology company based in Boston won a competition to root out security flaws in a type of open-source server designed for health data, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced Thursday morning.
The firm, 1upHealth, which touts Boston Children's Hospital as an investor, successfully identified ways to improve Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) servers. For this, the company was named the winner of ONC's Secure API Server Showdown.
During the first stage of the challenge, the firm Asymmetrik built a secure FHIR server to Health Level 7 (HL7®) specificiations. During the second stage, competitors looked for ways to improve security and better support sensitive health data.
- The result: The final product of this challenge is "a unique open source FHIR implementation" available to developers using common tools JavaScript, Node.js, and MongoDB, according to the ONC announcement.
- Requirements met: The implementation developed through this challenge meets the security technical requirements of the Argonaut Data Query Implementation Guide (Version 1.0.0).
- Familiar name: The winner of this challenge, 1upHealth, was also among two firms that won ONC's Health Data Provenance Challenge in March.
- Prizes: Asymmetrik won $10,000 for its first-stage success. The overall contest advertised $50,000 in prizes.
This technology can be used to promote health data interoperability, a priority area identified by the Trump administration.
Steven Porter is an associate content manager and Strategy editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.