HIMSS will be featuring the Interoperability Showcase at McCormick Place in Chicago April 4 - 8.

This is a big step for Public Health since this will be the second year that real-time interoperability between major EMR vendors and an Immunization Registry will be demonstrated.  This interoperability will use standard communication profiles developed by Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), and adopted by the Healthcare Information Standards Panel (HITSP). 

All communication will use messages defined in either HL7 version 2 or HL7 version 3, and will always use encrypted messages traveling over secure connections.  Secure sockets will be demonstrated for certain transactions, and web services (SOAP) will be used for others.

For more information see http://www.himssconference.org/exhibition/interop.aspx and http://www.matchmerge.com/images/stories/himss09showcasepublichealth.pdf