HL7 Announces 2008 Initiatives

Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Health Level Seven (HL7), a healthcare IT standards development organization announced key initiatives for 2008 to guide the development and adoption of healthcare IT standards in the U.S. and worldwide. The initiatives are part of HL7’s roadmap, which will define the organization’s plans for the next 18 to 36 months and report to HL7’s stakeholder community including end-users, implementers, and other standards development organizations on its progress.

Initiatives include:

• Driving the Evolution of Electronic Health Records Systems
  HL7 continues to refine standards and specifications for EHR systems. The EHR Work Group will begin developing Release 2 of the EHR System Functional Model in the second half of 2008. This standard outlines important features and functions that should be contained in an EHR system.

• Supporting Clinicians with Advanced Electronic Health Record Functionality
  There is a growing emphasis on preventive care and new developments in personalized medicine. Clinicians want to better manage patients at risk of developing conditions with genetic and hereditary components, such as breast and ovarian cancers. The HL7 Family History Model, approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 2007, will be used for family health history data storage in an EHR.

• Continuing Development of HL7 Version 2 and V3 Messaging Standards
  The continued development of standards, implementation guides and other technologies of the HL7 Version 2 family are critical to the maintenance and continued effectiveness of legacy systems across the globe. The newest version of the standard, Version 2.6, was published as an HL7 standard in January 2008.

• Expanding CDA Implementations
  The HL7 Structured Documents Work Group will ballot several informative and draft standards for trial use (DSTU) implementation guides in 2008. These include the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) Operative Note and the Diagnostic Imaging Report.