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 Posts Tagged ‘HL7’

Todays education sessions was the best ones we got so far in the HL7 Work Group Meeting at Phoenix.  Considering the importance of Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and the Continuity of Care Document (CCD), all three of us attended the morning session on CDA and the evening session on CCD.

CDA is the standard format for all clinical documents in HL7.  The CCD is a particular type of CDA document.  It contains clinical, demographic and administrative data for a patient.  It is actually the implementation of another standard, CCR, made ASTM.  Formally, it is the CDA implementation of the CCR.

CDA and CCD are extremely important for Therap as we have started a project to interface with HIEs.  In particular, we are working with the eHealthConnecticut project that is in the process of building a regional HIE (Health Information Exchange) in collaboration with the Connecticut Department of Social Services (DSS).

Yesterday Asif and Sazzad met an old guy at the HL7 Work Group Meeting in Phoenix, AZ.  Sazzad, with his usual manner advertised all he could about Therap.  Asif chatted with him.  The guy was old and lovable.  And he was very friendly.

Today Asif and Sazzad slept over and missed the general meeting.  During lunch, I found Asif doing small chit chat with the old guy over lunch.  After lunch, I asked Asif, do you know who you were talking to?  He said: yeah, a professor, nice guy.  I said, yeah, he is a professor alright, he also happens to be the most respectable person in the whole of HL7.  He was the Chairman of the board 3 times in the past.  He currently holds the Vice Chair position.  In todays general meeting, he was given a standing ovation.  He was one of the founders of HL7!  He was none other than William Edward Hammond, PhD.

Their jaws dropped to the floor

Each day in the conference starts with a “general meeting” at 8:00.  It also doubles as the breakfast time.  The Chairman of the Board of Directors of HL7, Robert Dolin MD, made his report today.  One memorable event in todays general meeting was bidding farewell to one of the most senior members of the HL7 board, W Edward Hammond PhD.  He was previously elected Chair for 3 times!

Following is a few pictures of yesterdays general meeting.  The best part of it was a report by the CTO, John Quinn.

Report by John Quinn, Chief Technology Officer of HL7

Partial Agenda of the General Meeting

General Meeting

I will finish off this article with a nice picture I took at the Desert Botanical Garden a few days ago.

Beautiful Arizona

It was a hectic day for all the three of us.  We divided up the sessions between ourselves so that we can cover as wide an area as possible.  The parallel sessions are divided into multiple tracks.  My selected track is HL7 Version 3.  Sazzad is on the Vocabulary track while Asif is on the HL7 Version 2 track.

HL7 will not only help us in interoperability, it will also help our existing applications.  HL7 V3 defines standards of many documents that are already part of Therap.  Many of our “forms” will benefit from it.  The best examples are the various health tracking forms, IDF, MAR and medication history.

HL7 even defines standards for quality measurements in healthcare.

HL7 V3 has two major parts, messaging and documents.  The document part is where the CDA (Clinical Document Architecture) specs are, which is the basis of CCD (Continuity of Care Document).  CCD is being adopted widely in the US.  It’s very important for Therap as well.  The messaging part of HL7 has not yet seen wide adoption in the US, but some HIEs (Health Information Exchange) are basing their standards on it.  As we are working to interface with HIEs, this part is important for us too.

HL7 is a huge standard.  Just to get an idea of how large it is, the download of the standards takes about 700MB of disk space.  There are over 27,000 HTML pages in it!  Yes, you read that correct, over twenty seven thousand!  And that’s only version 3.

HL7 is the worlds leading organization for creating standards for interoperability in the health sector field.  Therap has become an HL7 member.  We are actively working in developing electronic interfaces with other organizations, Health Information Exchanges and state systems.  To this goal, Sazzad, Asif and I are attending the HL7 Working Group Meeting being held at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix, Arizona.

Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort (Image from website)

Our objective in this conference is getting a broad insight into HL7.  HL7 is an incredibly huge body of standards.  Getting up to speed with it takes time, dedication, hard work and money.  Speaking of money, just the registration cost for this 5 day long meeting costs more than traveling up an down all the way from Bangladesh!  I doubt if any single MR/DD provider would be able justify the investment needed to make a standard compliant electronic interface all by themselves.

Today we did the registration and two introductory classes.  Looking forward for a week full of learning new and exciting stuff.

HL7 Registration Help Desk