In a blog post, the director of federal health architecture at the Office for the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC), Lauren Thompson, announced the arrival of version 4.0 of the government’s CONNECT software. CONNECT, which is an open source health information exchange (HIE) platform, has been a joint effort between ONC, the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

According to Thompson, CONNECT 4.0 is an upgrade, as it “offers more flexibility for users through its modular platform, which allows users to pick and choose which components they want to use in their IT environment.” The CONNECT platform allows for organizations to securely exchange data with others, using the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) specifications and standards.

Thompson also said CONNECT 4.0 has increased message volume, allows for the exchange of large files, and is available to be run on additional application servers. There is also “comprehensive event and metric data with improved logging capabilities.”