CHICAGO – After 10 years, the North American Connectathon is hitting an impressive stride, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise organizers say. As the size of the IHE interoperability demonstration continues to grow, this year's participants won the admiration of event leaders because they were "confident, well-prepared and cooperative."

The 2009 Connectathon Conference on Feb. 24 featured 350 engineers and technical support staff from 72 vendors and three universities sitting shoulder-to-shoulder at long tables in a basement show hall of the Chicago Hyatt Regency. The interoperability demonstration tested more than 170 profiles, compared to just one the first year and 12 in 2003.

"The vendors were better prepared this year - this group hit the ground running," observed Stephen Moore, demonstration coordinator and research assistant professor with the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology in St. Louis. "In previous years they had more questions about the network than the applications and that wasn't the case this year."

To be sure, "there is more confidence" this year, agreed Charles Parisot, manager of architecture and standards for GE Healthcare and board member for the Electronic Health Records Vendor Association.

"Tremendous progress has been made and it will only accelerate," he said. "This is the real coming of age for interoperability, the result of a lot of hard work."

IHE co-chairs Elliot Sloane and David Mendelson, MD, oversaw the proceedings. Sloane, assistant professor with the Villanova School of Business, used a cruise ship analogy to compare the Connectathon and the Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS09, April 4-8, in Chicago.

"The Connectathon is the 'coal room' tour while the Interoperability Showcase is the 'leisure deck,'" he said. More than half of the participating vendors - 49 - will take part in the Interoperability Showcase.

Among the things that have impressed Sloane the most about the Connectathon's progress is how the profiles have expanded to include medical devices such as infusion pumps and anesthesia monitors, along with what he calls "a spirit of cooperation" among competing vendors.

"The engineers and technical people from competing companies have forged relationships to the point where they have each others' cell phone numbers," he said.