Health Level Seven International

Last updated
Health Level Seven International
AbbreviationHL7
Formation1987
Legal status Non-profit
Headquarters Ann Arbor, Michigan
Website www.hl7.org

Health Level Seven International (HL7) is a non-profit ANSI-accredited standards development organization that develops standards that provide for global health data interoperability.

Contents

The 2.x versions of the standards are the most commonly used in the world. [1]

Organization

The HL7 community is organized in the form of a global organization (Health Level Seven International, Inc.) and country-specific affiliate organizations:

The organizational structure of HL7 is as follows: [5]

Origin

HL7 was founded in 1987 to produce a standard for the exchange of data with hospital information systems. Donald W. Simborg, the CEO of Simborg Systems took the initiative to create the HL7 organization with the aim to allow for wider use of its own exchange protocol (known as the StatLAN protocol, originally defined at the University of California, San Francisco in the late 1970s). Membership initially consisted of those that had already implemented the StatLAN protocol. [3] The name "Health Level-7" is a reference to the seventh layer of the ISO OSI Reference model also known as the application layer. The name indicates that HL7 focuses on application layer protocols for the health care domain, independent of lower layers. HL7 effectively considers all lower layers merely as tools. [7]

HL7 is one of several American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) operating in the healthcare arena. [8] Most of these 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.

Collaboration and initiatives

HL7 collaborates 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. [9] HL7 collaborates 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.[ citation needed ]

HL7 has been adopted by ISO as a center of gravity in international standardization and has been accredited as a partnering organization for mutual issuing of standards. The first mutually published standard is ISO/HL7 21731:2006 Health informatics—HL7 version 3—Reference information model—Release 1.

Accelerator Program

In February 2019, HL7 launched the FHIR Accelerator Program designed to assist implementers across the health care spectrum in the creation of FHIR implementation guides or other informative documents. The program is based on an innovative model piloted by the HL7 Argonaut Project (provider-provider and provider-patient) and the HL7 Da Vinci Project (payer-provider). The service will allow implementation communities to select a range of support solutions[ buzzword ] based on their own needs and resources, ranging from self-service templates and tools, to contracted project management, SME, and infrastructure service. [10]

Argonaut Project

In 2014, HL7 launched the Argonaut Project along with members of the private sector to advance industry adoption of modern, open interoperability standards such as HL7 FHIR. This effort follows on recommendations from the Joint HIT Standards and Policy Committee's JASON Task Force Report, the HIT Standards Committee's NwHIN Power Team, the MITRE JASON Reports of 2013 and 2014, and the 2010 PCAST Report.

Standards

HL7 International specifies a number of flexible standards, guidelines, and methodologies by which various healthcare systems can communicate with each other. Such guidelines or data standards are a set of rules that allow information to be shared and processed in a uniform and consistent manner. These data standards are meant to allow healthcare organizations to easily share clinical information. Theoretically, this ability to exchange information should help to minimize the tendency for medical care to be geographically isolated and highly variable. [11]

HL7 International considers the following standards to be its primary standards – those standards that are most commonly used and implemented: [12]

Other HL7 standards/methodologies include: [15]

Processes

HL7 encompasses the complete life cycle of a standards specification including the development, adoption, market recognition, utilization, and adherence. [19]

In April, 2013, HL7's primary standards and other select products were made available for license at no cost. Most HL7 standards can now be deemed Open Standards. [20]

See also

Related Research Articles

Health Level Seven or HL7 is a range of global standards for the transfer of clinical and administrative health data between applications. The HL7 standards focus on the application layer, which is "layer 7" in the Open Systems Interconnection model. The standards are produced by Health Level Seven International, an international standards organization, and are adopted by other standards issuing bodies such as American National Standards Institute and International Organization for Standardization. There are a range of primary standards that are commonly used across the industry, as well as secondary standards which are less frequently adopted.

In the context of Health informatics, CCOW or Clinical Context Object Workgroup is a Health Level Seven International standard protocol designed to enable disparate applications to synchronize in real time, and at the user-interface level. It is vendor independent and allows applications to present information at the desktop and/or portal level in a unified way.

Continuity of Care Record (CCR) is a health record standard specification developed jointly by ASTM International, the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and other health informatics vendors.

The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) is a standards developing organization (SDO) dealing with medical research data linked with healthcare, to "enable information system interoperability to improve medical research and related areas of healthcare". The standards support medical research from protocol through analysis and reporting of results and have been shown to decrease resources needed by 60% overall and 70–90% in the start-up stages when they are implemented at the beginning of the research process.

The HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is an XML-based markup standard intended to specify the encoding, structure and semantics of clinical documents for exchange. In November 2000, HL7 published Release 1.0. The organization published Release 2.0 with its "2005 Normative Edition."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Continua Health Alliance</span>

Continua Health Alliance is an international non-profit, open industry group of nearly 240 healthcare providers, communications, medical, and fitness device companies. Continua was a founding member of Personal Connected Health Alliance which was launched in February 2014 with other founding members mHealth SUMMIT and HIMSS.

The ISO/TC 215 is the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) Technical Committee (TC) on health informatics. TC 215 works on the standardization of Health Information and Communications Technology (ICT), to allow for compatibility and interoperability between independent systems.

CEN ISO/IEEE 11073 Health informatics - Medical / health device communication standards enable communication between medical, health care and wellness devices and external computer systems. They provide automatic and detailed electronic data capture of client-related and vital signs information, and of device operational data.

The Continuity of Care Document (CCD) specification is an XML-based markup standard intended to specify the encoding, structure, and semantics of a patient summary clinical document for exchange.

This article documents the effort of the Health Level Seven(HL7) community and specifically the HL7 Architecture Board (ArB) to develop an interoperability framework that would support services, messages, and Clinical Document Architecture(CDA) ISO 10871.

The Clinical Care Classification (CCC) System is a standardized, coded nursing terminology that identifies the discrete elements of nursing practice. The CCC provides a unique framework and coding structure. Used for documenting the plan of care; following the nursing process in all health care settings.

The Accra Declaration confirmed the support of the two main healthcare interoperability standards by the open source community. With the support of major open source advocates, this allowed free and unfettered access to the core healthcare interoperability standards which resulted in a substantial increase in their usage. The International Healthcare Modelling Standards Development Organisation (IHMSDO) had earlier placed the intellectual property (IP) of the HL7 and DICOM standards and the IHE profiles into the public domain under the creative commons licence.

International HL7 implementations is a collection of known implementations of the HL7 Interoperability standard. These do not necessarily refer to cross-border health information systems.

The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard is a set of rules and specifications for exchanging electronic health care data. It is designed to be flexible and adaptable, so that it can be used in a wide range of settings and with different health care information systems. The goal of FHIR is to enable the seamless and secure exchange of health care information, so that patients can receive the best possible care. The standard describes data formats and elements and an application programming interface (API) for exchanging electronic health records (EHR). The standard was created by the Health Level Seven International (HL7) health-care standards organization.

Medical device connectivity is the establishment and maintenance of a connection through which data is transferred between a medical device, such as a patient monitor, and an information system. The term is used interchangeably with biomedical device connectivity or biomedical device integration. By eliminating the need for manual data entry, potential benefits include faster and more frequent data updates, diminished human error, and improved workflow efficiency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise</span> Non-profit organization

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is a non-profit organization based in the US state of Illinois. It sponsors an initiative by the healthcare industry to improve the way computer systems share information. IHE was established in 1998 by a consortium of radiologists and information technology (IT) experts.

InterSystems HealthShare is a healthcare informatics platform for hospitals, integrated delivery networks (IDNs) and regional and national health information exchanges (HIE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IEEE 11073 service-oriented device connectivity</span> Communication protocol for point-of-care (PoC) medical devices

The IEEE 11073 service-oriented device connectivity (SDC) family of standards defines a communication protocol for point-of-care (PoC) medical devices. The main purpose is to enable manufacturer-independent medical device-to-device interoperability. Furthermore, interconnection between medical devices and medical information systems is enabled. However, IEEE 11073 SDC does not compete with established and emerging standards like HL7 v2 or HL7 FHIR. IEEE 11073 SDC is part of the established ISO/IEEE 11073 family of standards.

Clinical data standards are used to store and communicate information related to healthcare so that its meaning is unambiguous. They are used in clinical practice, in activity analysis and finding, and in research and development.

References

  1. ↑ Shaver, Dave. "The HL7 Evolution - Comparing HL7 Versions 2 and 3" (PDF). Corepoint Health. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 May 2013. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
  2. ↑ "Contact Health Level Seven". Health Level Seven International.
  3. 1 2 "The early history of health Level 7". 2014-05-14. Ringholm.
  4. ↑ "HL7 Strategic Plan" (PDF).
  5. ↑ "HL7 Governance and Operations Manual". 2014-05-13. Health Level Seven International.
  6. ↑ "HL7 Board of Directors". 2014-05-14. Health Level 7 International.
  7. ↑ "About Health Level Seven". Health Level Seven International.
  8. ↑ http://www.ansi.org/ ANSI
  9. ↑ "HL7 Agreements".
  10. ↑ Landi, Heather. "HIMSS19: ONC, CMS officials outline the framework for interoperability, the use of APIs, FHIR". Fierce Healthcare. Retrieved 2019-06-19.
  11. ↑ Joel Rodrigues (2010). Health Information Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, Volume 1. IGI Global. p. xxxix. ISBN   978-1-60566-988-5.
  12. ↑ "HL7 Primary Standards". Health Level Seven International.
  13. ↑ "HL7 Standards Product Brief - HL7 Version 2 Product Suite | HL7 International". www.hl7.org. Retrieved 2021-05-11.
  14. ↑ "HL7 Standards Product Brief - HL7 Version 3 Product Suite | HL7 International". www.hl7.org. Retrieved 2021-05-11.
  15. ↑ "HL7 Standards". Health Level Seven International.
  16. ↑ "Introduction to HL7 Standards | HL7 International". www.hl7.org. Retrieved 2021-05-11.
  17. ↑ "Electronic Health Record".
  18. ↑ "PHR System Functional Model".
  19. ↑ "HL7 2012 STRATEGIC INITIATIVES" (PDF). HL7. 2012.
  20. ↑ "HL7 International Standards Available at No Cost".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.