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• NwHIN Exchange is a collection of standards, protocols, specifications, and services that enable the secure exchange of health information over the internet. The NwHIN Exchange specifications provide methods to perform universal patient lookup, document discovery, and retrieval, and is often used to facilitate exchange between organizations such as health information exchanges Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) or large integrated delivery networks (IDNs). 
• NwHIN Direct is a set of standards, policies, and services that enable simple, secure transport of health information between authorized care providers. The NwHIN Direct Project specifications enable standards-based health information exchange in support of core Stage 2 Meaningful Use measures, including communication of summary care records, referrals, discharge summaries and other clinical documents in support of continuity of care and medication reconciliation, and communication of laboratory results to providers.

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In addition to NwHIN Exchange and NwHIN Direct NHIN DIrect gateway interfaces, CONNECT also interacts with mail servers via SMTP and IMAP for a simple NwHIN Direct NHIN DIrect exchange.

System Overview section describe this is more detail.

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Figure - How  CONNECT connects systems in the healthcare ecosystem.

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CONNECT is designed to support Direct secure health transport enabling the ability to exchange data with organizations that support the NwHIN Direct Project specifications. To handle the sending and receiving of Direct messages, CONNECT integrates with an existing mail server via SMTP and IMAP protocols and act as a HISP. To accommodate the sending and receiving of Direct messages using SOAP edge clients, CONNECT includes an adapter-facing gateway endpoint for sending messages. Also, the receiving adapter endpoint can be configured.

Figure - How  CONNECT connects systems in the healthcare ecosystem using Direct.
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