Apelon and MaestroDev Expand Terminology Partnership for VA & DoD

Press Release | PR Web | August 1, 2013

Joint data sharing and data modeling solution offered by Apelon and MaestroDev will improve clinical data interoperability at the VA & DoD.

Apelon, a provider of terminology and data interoperability solutions, and MaestroDev, a DevOps Orchestration platform, today announced an expansion of their partnership to assist in the data sharing and data modeling efforts underway between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Together, Apelon and MaestroDev are enabling expanded use of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) Workbench -- an important emergent open source terminology development tool -- by the two Agencies. Apelon is providing products and expertise in terminology and data standardization and MaestroDev is providing development and operations automation, including a platform on which to build, test, and release software. The immediate work product of the collaboration is the ability to exchange clinical data from existing electronic medical record systems. The focus of the first deliverable is the exchange of patient allergy information.

More specifically, Apelon and MaestroDev are configuring the Workbench to manage each Agency’s local terminology along with industry standards including SNOMED CT, ICD-9-CM, CPT, LOINC, RxNorm, and others. The synergistic integration of Apelon’s terminology experience and MaestroDev’s DevOps Orchestration platform allows multiple users to complete the necessary workflows enabling frictionless contribution of new content to the U.S. extension of SNOMED CT and the rest of the IHTSDO community. This project leverages each company’s experience with open source technologies to achieve efficiency and quality. Together, MaestroDev and Apelon deploy a particularly effective system for modeling and distributing multiple terminologies.

“Achieving Continuous Delivery with the VHA and expanding those DevOps best practices to the Department of Defense accelerates the availability of new medical terminology definitions to patients and veterans,” said Doug Dennington, MaestroDev CEO. “Our team is humbled to be part of such an important project that serves the healthcare needs of millions of veterans. Apelon has been critical to our success on this project, and we look forward to advancing the efficiency of the IHTSDO ecosystem.”

“Normalized terminology provides a foundation for improved care coordination and analytics. We look forward to seeing these efforts grow from simple interoperability into decision support applications,” said Stephen Coady, Apelon’s CEO. “As always, it is a privilege to work with MaestroDev and these Federal Agencies in their efforts to improve the health of those who serve.”