HL7 has created three new roles to support the nonprofit organizations’ restructuring into two divisions: standards development and standards implementation.
Following an 18 month-long re-envisioning project, HL7 announced the appointment of three executives: Daniel Vreeman, D.P.T, as the chief standards development officer; Viet Nguyen, M.D., as the chief standards implementation officer; and Diego Kaminker, as the deputy chief standards implementation officer.
All three roles are newly created positions. HL7's chief technology officer, Wayne Kubick, will retire at the end of this year. "My six years at HL7 CTO witnessed staggering growth and change, with much more to come," Kubick said in a statement. "While I'm heartened by the progress made helping prepare a revitalized HL7 for the path forward, I also realize these are the initial steps of what will be a long journey to the future. HL7 needs new ideas and fresh, energetic leaders to help take us there."
The HL7 standards development division will focus on the development and maintenance of HL7 specifications while the standards implementation division will concentrate on helping communities discover, access and understand the specifications as well as test their implementations.
“We are excited to have such accomplished and globally recognized individuals join the HL7 executive leadership team,” said Charles Jaffe, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of HL7 International, in a statement. “Each of them brings their unique skills and experience with HL7. We expect that the impact of their leadership will be felt in the near term and in the years to come.”
Daniel Vreeman, D.P.T, a physical therapist, biomedical informatician, and expert in health data standards, will lead the HL7 standards development division. Vreeman has developed internationally adopted health data standards, implemented them in multi-institutional health IT systems, evaluated their use, and provided strategic advice to interoperability initiatives of numerous U.S. federal agencies and national eHealth efforts in other countries. He has been the senior clinical data standards lead at RTI since 2019 and was previously the director of LOINC and health data standards at Regenstrief Institute from 2006-2019. Vreeman also serves as the technical director for the HL7 Gravity Accelerator, the chair for the Health Standards Collaborative and is a founding member of the HL7 FHIR Foundation.
Viet Nguyen, M.D., is an internist, pediatrician and clinical informaticist who has held leadership roles such as chief medical officer and chief medical information officer at Leidos Corp., Lockheed-Martin and Systems Made Simple. He will lead the standards implementation division alongside Diego Kaminker. Nguyen has been active in HL7 for approximately 20 years and has served as the technical director for the HL7 Da Vinci FHIR Accelerator.
Diego Kaminker is the founder and owner of Kern IT with specialties in integration, software development and project management. Kaminker has been a member of the HL7 community for twenty years and has served multiple terms as the chair of HL7 Argentina as well as an affiliate director of the HL7 International board of directors. He is also a founding member of HL7 Argentina and the HL7 FHIR Foundation and has participated in the Argentina National Digital Health Network and has served as a guest faculty member at Columbia University in the United States.
