Services Birds of a Feather
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HL7 Services Specification Project Proposal
Target HL7 Acceptance Date: January WGM, Orlando, FL
Proposal:
To charter a project sponsored by EHR Technical Committee Proposed, pending formal validation to identify, specify and document functionality for services that are computationally-relevant to healthcare organizations with the intention of instituting a repeatable process for doing so within the HL7 community and its partners. Through participation by project members,
The project will have an anticipated duration of one year, upon deliverables documented below will be produced. Participating organizations intend to commit time and resources to the successful completion of this project.
Key Information:
Project Name:
HL7 Services Specification Project
Sponsoring TC:
TBD
Participants:
- (Major Sponsors) HL7 Finland
- Kaiser-Permanente
- U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs
Project Schedule
Start anticipated January 2005 (Orlando WGM)
Completion targeted for January 2006
Project Objectives
- To facilitate open industry input for collaborating organizations interested in supporting this process.
- To gauge broader interest in healthcare computational services within the HL7 community
- To facilitate the development of a set of implementable interface standards supporting agreed-upon services specifications to form the basis for provider purchasing and procurement decision.
- To stimulate the adoption and use of standardized “plug-and-play” services by healthcare software product vendors
- To validate the HL7 Development Framework in its use for the development of services specifications, recommending enhancements if appropriate.
- To complement and not conflict with existing HL7 work products and activities, leveraging content and lessons learned from elsewhere within the organization.
Project Deliverables
- To identify some exemplar scenarios/use-cases that will serve to identify immediate priority services for development work en route to a formal “roadmap” catalogue of services to be specified by HL7.
- To produce a formalism that will serve as the means for the consistent, repeatable, and precise elaboration of HL7 services specifications.
- To follow the HDF process to produce service specification instances, based upon the most immediate need, that prove the process and approach.
- To specify the relationship between this project and existing HL7 work products and projects, including but not limited to the EHR Functional Model and Standard DSTU and the HL7 RIM
- If necessary, document proposed revisions or enhancements to the HL7 Development Framework.
Background and Context
For several years, there have been individually-focused efforts related to services and service interfaces within HL7 across a variety of groups and efforts, such as CCOW, Vocab (CTS), CDS, and Java SIG. In addition, there has been an informal group, the Services Birds-of-a-Feather (Services BOF) that has been discussing this topic and brainstorming ideas to promote this space within HL7. Of late, it would appear that a number of converging drivers have set the stage to accelerate these activities into a more tangible product. Among these, but by no means an all-inclusive list, are activities such as several national initiatives (Australia, Finland, U.S. NHII, among many others), a renewed HL7-OMG relationship, in addition to interests from several benefactors (such as VHA and Kaiser-Permanente).
As a result is this proposal to institute some of the formative work necessary to explore this space in more detail, produce the seminal documentation needed, and assess the potential for moving this work forward within the HL7 community. The project proposed here is intended to address these needs
Issues and Assumptions
- The formalism by which the Services Specification is to be expressed is yet to be determined. The level of granularity and expression of this will have significant implications. Whatever formalism is chosen must be formal, precise, concise, rigorous and ultimately testable so as to ensure conformance.
- The formal relationships between this effort and other HL7 committees and work products will need to be precisely identified and described. There is no intention to re-invent work being done elsewhere within HL7.
- The Project Plan will elaborate the approach that will be used to identify and select the initial service instances to be developed.
Date of Last Revision
November 29, 2004