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Looking for a great coder to help a great cause

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Just about a year ago we launched the HealthVault emergency prep feature. It’s a great and simple way to collect your family’s information in one place, keep it up to date using automated connections, and make it available in an emergency situation.

It’s those last to points that really make the solution transformational. With HealthVault, you can set up connections to national pharmacies, labs and other clinical sources so that your information STAYS up to date as your situation changes. And just as important, you can use outbound connections from HealthVault to ensure the information gets where it needs to.

As part of the announcement I mentioned the Next of Kin Registry, a great organization that has been at the emergency game for a long time. They collect emergency contact and identifying information in their central system, and then make it available to emergency responders during a disaster … which can help ensure key information is available, and connect families and loved ones as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the NOKR connection to HealthVault hasn’t made it into production yet … not because it’s a hard job, but because it’s always tough for volunteer organizations to find the right expertise to help them out. I just heard from Mark Cerney at NOKR and they’re actively looking for somebody to help them with this project, so I wanted to see if perhaps somewhere in my readership was a willing volunteer.

It’s a pretty simple spec:

  1. Add a “Link to HealthVault” button on their website that does an app auth for people who want to use their HV information to populate the NOKR registry.
  2. Implement a background process that periodically calls GetUpdatedRecordsForApplication, and for each record that’s had relevant data updated, submits an update to the NOKR registry.

Because each new record in the NOKR database is additive, this process doesn’t even really need to keep any state about what it’s done before. The only semi-complicated part will be to match the data types and information in HealthVault to the schema at NOKR.

Getting this connection in place would be a really Good Thing and I think would only take a couple of weekends for a capable developer. I’d be happy to offer some blog notoriety --- and for what it’s worth, we’re always recommending folks for commercial HealthVault projects and this would be a great way to demonstrate that you know your stuff!

If you have any interest in helping Mark and the NOKR team out … let me know by using the contact form on this page, or get in touch with them directly. My team will happily provide you technical assistance if you need it.

Here’s hoping we make a Code Connection here… and thanks in advance!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 09, 2012
    If the Next of Kin Registry is still in need of a coder, please let me know. Our website is http://www.trcs.com. The company consists of my wife and I. I will also follow up wiht the Next of Kin Registry directly. Regards, Rajesh

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2012
    Thanks Rajesh! We've had a couple of folks raise their hands, but I'm not sure if they'll work out. Fantastic for you to contact Mark and team directly --- if it looks like you're moving forward, please let me know and I'm more than happy to offer technical assistance. Love this community!