For Our Friend John Charles Hardin

(1966-2007)

In Memory

During October 2007 the Medical Banking Project received the sad and incredulous news that our friend, John Charles Hardin, chief architect of the C.O.M.B.A.T technical platform, passed away during his sleep. Meggan, his wife, called us to relay how much John enjoyed working with the members at MBProject and how much he supported and believed in our cause. 

During John’s presentation at our 3rd National Medical Banking Institute we learned about his IT skills. He was instantly recognized as an unusually gifted talent in open source technology. In fact, John was an open source warrior, holding key positions in a number of open source organizations to advance the cause (OASIS Technical committees on SOA). His final position was at Sun Microsystems, an open source advocate, where he managed B2B initiatives. Most recently, John wrote an analysis of how an innovation in UDEF, created at Lockheed, could facilitate semantic interoperability of medical records. You can find this analysis in The Medical Banking Report, July/August 2007, Vol. 4 No. 3.

John chaired our Planning & Design Subcommittee for the C.O.M.B.A.T. Initiative. He architected the design for a medical banking platform that could be used by banks for provisioning healthcare records, fully incorporated in MBProject's response to ONCHIT's RFP in 2005. His work defined "C.O.M.B.A.T. Version 1", and we formally recognized his efforts by making him MBProject's Person of the Year in 2006. John introduced MBProject to General Motors, Walt Disney and the Automotive Industry Action Group. He paved the way for the formation of our Joint Taskgroup for Value In Health. For these and many other reasons, we are honoring John’s work in our website.

John is survived by his wife, Meggan, and his two sons who live in Kansas City. 

Personal Comments:

"Clearly, John was a very talented person, and in my eyes one of those very rare persons with technical talent and a vision for the how the future can be different. I know how hard he worked to realize those visions. It was always interesting to me to hear his perspectives on what could be done, and then see him apply his unbounded energy towards making it happen. I value John’s contributions and insight and will miss him and our interactions. His passion was rare and his skills even more so. John will always be remembered in a very special way as someone who really has made a difference."

Tony Scott, Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, The Walt Disney Company

"John was brilliant and energetic. He was a very good friend and confidant and I deeply miss our stimulating and encouraging talks. John was always quick to discuss how to link the open source movement to medical banking in order to create a disruptive force in healthcare that can have ripple effects all over the world for the better. John’s work lives on in the work that continues to unfold as we seek to engage banks in healthcare."

John Casillas, Founder & Executive Director, The Medical Banking Project

If you would like to add a personal comment, please email us at: info@mbproject.org