I'd like to hope so. I think we've seen this kind of interaction play out on a much smaller scale in the commercial world, and we're seeing more of it. For exam

I'd like to hope so. I think we've seen this kind of interaction play out on a much smaller scale in the commercial world, and we're seeing more of it. For example, when Intermountain Healthcare selected a Cerner EHR, they did so as part of a multi-year partnership [1], under the condition that Cerner would provide open interfaces to their EHR data so that Intermountain could continue developing (and begin porting their existing) home-grown decision support tools. Part of the arrangement was an innovation fund to support development of the specifications needed. And I think that's actually a great pattern, since we certainly won't have all the answers right out of the gate. With respect to DHMSM, the timeline is long enough that it's very hard to name relevant technologies on the way in, without the concern that they'll be out of date (or at least out of fashion) by the time implementation hits. 1. http://www.cerner.com/Intermountain_and_Cerner_announce_strategic_partnership/ http://www.cerner.com/Intermountain_and_Cerner_announce_stra...