Black Smoke over Redmond

Last week develpopers met face-to-face in Redmond to declare a victor among the four protocols proposed for NHIN Direct:

• XMPP
• SMTP
• REST
• IHE+Adapter

If you get the "black smoke" reference, you already understand that no choice was made, and discussion is still occuring.  You may have also read commentators on the Web:

Arien Malec
Wes Rishel
Sean Nolan
John Halamka

I was not able to attend the meeting, but what I'm hearing in general are that:

1. There was a "general consensus" led by EMR vendors for the IHE solution on the backbone.
2. A couple of naysayers against the IHE solution wouldn't come to consensus at all.
3. SMTP seems to be strongly supported for the edge.

To say that I look forward to continued discussion would be disingenuous.  I'd love to be moving on to the next stage, BUT, discussion still needs to occur, so I'll be patient and let it work itself out.  I am thankful that Arien chose the path of trying to obtain agreement, rather than hitting arbitrary deadlines.  As Wes has said in this past, if this project succeeds in twice the time allocated, it will still be a big win.