Announcing the Alembic Foundation: An Initiative for Better Health Data Sharing and Personal Data Management
The Foundation aims to accomplish this in two ways:
- By serving as a neutral forum to foster collaboration with organizations and individuals from industry, the public and government to confront and solve real-world challenges
- By providing a basic toolset for communities of interest to organize themselves, define their project(s) and determine the relevant governance structure that assures success
"The Alembic Foundation exists for the public good, and to contribute to the public commons through open processes that create open technologies for transformation," said David Riley, Alembic's president. "The Foundation will be tackling projects that will benefit from using open technologies to solve real-life challenges. As our first project, the Alembic Foundation is going to expand on the Federal Health Architecture's (FHA) CONNECT project to create a truly open community that uses Open Source technology for health information exchange."
A Webinar announcing further details about the Alembic Foundation and the Aurion Project will be held on Tuesday, March 22 at 1:00 pm EDT. To register for the Webinar, click https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/722650370.
The Aurion Project: An Evolution of FHA's CONNECT Open Source Project
Alembic's first project, Aurion, is an Open Source software project that will promote health IT interoperability nationwide in accordance with nationally-recognized standards. The direct ancestor to the Aurion Project is the multi-award winning CONNECT program built by FHA under the leadership of the Alembic Foundation's CEO, David Riley, and its chief operating officer, Vanessa Manchester, who previously worked within the FHA program management office.
Riley and Manchester chose Aurion as the initial project of the Alembic Foundation because they believe the Foundation can provide an effective vehicle for the public and private sectors to work together to build upon CONNECT. Supporting this important work through a nonprofit organization expands the ability for organizations of all sizes to contribute to Aurion through development and resources. It also opens more opportunities for organizations to participate in setting the requirements for and influencing the direction of Aurion.
According to Brian Behlendorf, the chief technology officer for the World Economic Forum, "Creating a nonprofit foundation to continue the work started by the federal government is the right thing to do. It allows the project to grow and involve a far larger constituency in its development, with clearer rules of engagement for everyone. Our hope is that this unleashes greater degrees of collaboration and innovation."
Aurion 3.1, released today, is the CONNECT 3.1 codebase rebranded. With the release of Aurion 4.0 on May 3, 2011, the Alembic Foundation will assume a custodial agent role for the development efforts of a robust open community and ecosystem being built around the Aurion platform. After the release of Aurion 4.0, the Aurion community will continue to evolve the software to ensure that it remains a powerful, open source option for a Nationwide Health Information Network compliant gateway.
Alembic Foundation Board of Directors
The Alembic Foundation has named its first three members of the Board of Directors. Over the course of the next year, the board will expand to a total of 15 board members. Current members of the board include:
- David Riley, Chairman of the Board and president of the Alembic Foundation, and former lead to the CONNECT Project under the Federal Health Architecture
- Brian Behlendorf, chief technology officer for the World Economic Forum and long-time open source expert advising the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, and others
- Jon Teichrow, president of the Mirth Corporation with 25 years' experience at the intersection of technology and healthcare
More information about the Directors' backgrounds can be found at www.alembicfoundation.org.
