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HL7 - Standards Development Organization
Electronic Medical Records
- HL7
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Health Level Seven is one of several
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) -accredited
Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) operating in the
healthcare arena. Most SDOs produce standards (sometimes
called specifications or protocols) for a particular
healthcare domain such as pharmacy, medical devices, imaging
or insurance (claims processing) transactions. Health Level
Seven’s domain is clinical and administrative data.
Headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI, Health Level Seven is like
most of the other SDOs in that it is a not-for-profit
volunteer organization. Its members-- providers, vendors,
payers, consultants, government groups and others who have
an interest in the development and advancement of clinical
and administrative standards for healthcare—develop the
standards. Like all ANSI-accredited SDOs, Health Level Seven
adheres to a strict and well-defined set of operating
procedures that ensures consensus, openness and balance of
interest. A frequent misconception about Health Level Seven
(and presumably about the other SDOs) is that it develops
software. In reality, Health Level Seven develops
specifications, the most widely used being a messaging
standard that enables disparate healthcare applications to
exchange keys sets of clinical and administrative data.
Members of Health Level Seven are known collectively as the
Working Group, which is organized into technical committees
and special interest groups. The technical committees are
directly responsible for the content of the Standards.
Special interest groups serve as a test bed for exploring
new areas that may need coverage in HL7’s published
standards. A list of the technical committees and special
interest groups as well as their missions, scopes and
current leadership is available on this web site.
HL7's Mission
HL7 is an international community of healthcare subject
matter experts and information scientists collaborating to
create standards for the exchange, management and
integration of electronic healthcare information. HL7
promotes the use of such standards within and among
healthcare organizations to increase the effectiveness and
efficiency of healthcare delivery for the benefit of all.
HL7's Strategies:
Develop coherent, extendible standards that permit
structured, encoded health care information of the type
required to support patient care, to be exchanged between
computer applications while preserving meaning. Develop a
formal methodology to support the creation of HL7 standards
from the HL7 Reference Information Model (RIM). Educate the
healthcare industry, policy makers, and the general public
concerning the benefits of healthcare information
standardization generally and HL7 standards specifically.
Promote the use of HL7 standards world-wide through the
creation of HL7 International Affiliate organizations, which
participate in developing HL7 standards and which localize
HL7 standards as required. Stimulate, encourage and
facilitate domain experts from healthcare industry
stakeholder organizations to participate in HL7 to develop
healthcare information standards in their area of expertise.
Collaborate with other standards development organizations
and national and international sanctioning bodies (e.g. ANSI
and ISO), in both the healthcare and information
infrastructure domains to promote the use of supportive and
compatible standards. Collaborate with healthcare
information technology users to ensure that HL7 standards
meet real-world requirements, and that appropriate standards
development efforts are initiated by HL7 to meet emergent
requirements.
What Does the Name HL7 Mean
"Level Seven" refers to the highest level of the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
communications model for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)
- the application level. The application level addresses
definition of the data to be exchanged, the timing of the
interchange, and the communication of certain errors to the
application. The seventh level supports such functions as
security checks, participant identification, availability
checks, exchange mechanism negotiations and, most
importantly, data exchange structuring.
Why HL7
There are several health care standards development efforts
currently underway throughout the world. Why then, embrace
HL7? HL7 is singular as it focuses on the interface
requirements of the entire health care organization, while
most other efforts focus on the requirements of a particular
department. Moreover, on an ongoing basis, HL7 develops a
set of protocols on the fastest possible track that is both
responsive and responsible to its members. The group
addresses the unique requirements of already installed
hospital and departmental systems, some of which use mature
technologies.
While HL7 focuses on addressing immediate needs, the group
continues to dedicate its efforts to ensuring concurrence
with other United States and International standards
development activities. Argentina, Australia, Canada, China,
Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, India, Japan, Korea,
Lithuania, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Southern Africa,
Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom are part
of HL7 initiatives. Moreover, HL7 is an American National
Standards Institute (ANSI) approved Standards Developing
Organization (SDO). HL7 strives to identify and support the
diverse requirements of each of its membership
constituencies: Users, Vendors, and Consultants. Cognizant
of their needs, requirements, priorities and interests, HL7
supports all groups as they make important contributions to
the quality of the organization. The committee structure,
balanced balloting procedures and open membership policies
ensure that all requirements are addressed uniformly and
equitably with quality and consistency.
How is HL7 Organized
The organization is managed by a Board of Directors, which
is comprised of eight elected positions and three appointed
positions. The organization is comprised of Technical
Committees and Special Interest Groups that are responsible
for defining the HL7 standard protocol. Each Technical
Committee and Special Interest group is chaired by two or
more co-chairs. Collectively, the co-chairs comprise the
Technical Steering Committee, which votes on issues related
to the standard. Votes of the Technical Steering Committee
as passed as recommendations to the Board of Directors, who
make the final decision. HL7 members are encouraged to
participate in all of these committees.
Source: http://www.hl7.org/about/hl7about.htm#WhatisHL7 EMR Research Listing
(Click on the links below for more information)
Continuity of Care Record CCR - A Utility Theory (by Nainil Chheda)
HIPAA (by Rob Tidwell)
FDA (by Rob Tidwell)
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