Canada organised its first IPS Projectathon in March. A Projectathon is an important step and a best-practice approach in testing and validation of a specification package, where implementers collaborate to test their solutions using methodology and tools that accelerate interoperability. A Projectathon provides an opportunity for participants to test their systems among themselves and against a reference environment. It is also an opportunity to collaborate among peers to enable hands-on knowledge exchange.
The objective of the first pan-Canadian Projectathon was to test and improve the quality of the pan-Canadian Patient Summary Interoperability Specifications (PS-CA Specifications) to ensure they are implementable, testable and meet expectations. The PS-CA supports several implementation patterns including MHD and a new Canadian National integration profile called CA:FeX. The CA:FeX supports saving and retrieving clinical data to and from a central document repository.
The pan-Canadian Projectathon – Final Report 
provides details about the Projectathon proceedings, including notable highlights, participant feedback, lessons learned, and opportunities for improvement.