Sloane stopped short of saying the heavy lifting has been done on making interoperability a reality for healthcare.

"Some heavy lifting has been done, but certainly not all," he said. "The foundation has been laid."

Mendelson, chief of clinical informatics and director of radiology information systems for Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, observed that the progress could be measured in the type of tests being conducted.

"It is very much real world now," he said. "It's about determining which profiles are useful in the real world and which ones may not be."

Demonstration docents Mike Nusbaum and Mike Glickman said the serious commitment by vendors is making a huge difference in moving the interoperability project forward.

"We're talking about tens of thousands of transactions and 11,200 engineer hours, equaling $1 million in time investment by vendors," said Nusbaum, IHE International board director and president of Victoria, BC-based M.H. Nusbaum & Associates.

Glickman, president of Rockville, MD-based Computer Network Architects, said the key to success is "a massive amount of testing - you can't do too much testing."

In recent years, the Connectathon has gone international, with demonstrations now held in Europe and Asia along with the North American event.