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Link to HL7 V3 Draft Standard for Trial Use: HL7 Version 3 Standard: Context-Aware Retrieval Application (Infobutton); Knowledge Request, DSTU Release 2 HL7® Version 3 Standard, © 2013 Health Level Seven ® International. All Rights Reserved. HL7 and Health Level Seven are registered trademarks of Health Level Seven International. Reg. U.S. Pat & TM Off Reproduction of this material in any form is strictly forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Ann Arbor, MI USA August 2013 |
HL7 Version 3 Standard: HL7 Version 3 Standard: Context-Aware Retrieval Application (Infobutton); Knowledge Request , DSTU Release 2July 2013The HL7 Board of Directors is pleased to offer you this DRAFT STANDARD FOR TRIAL USE: HL7 Version 3 Standard: HL7 Version 3 Standard: Context-Aware Retrieval Application (Infobutton); Knowledge Request , DSTU Release 2 web version. Publication of this draft standard for trial use and comment has been approved by Health Level Seven (HL7). Distribution of this draft standard for comment shall not continue beyond twenty-four (24) months from the date of publication. It is expected that following this twenty-four (24) month period, this draft standard, revised as necessary, will be submitted to the American National Standards Institute for approval as an American National Standard. A public review in accordance with established ANSI procedures is required at the end of the trial use period and before a draft standard for trial use may be submitted to ANSI for approval as an American National Standard. This draft standard is not an American National Standard. Suggestions for revision should be directed to Karen Van Hentenryck (KarenVan@hl7.org), HL7 HQ or via the HL7 DSTU Comments Web site at: http://www.hl7.org/dstucomments/index.cfm. Sincerely, The HL7 BoardWhy Version 3?Healthcare costs ever more dominate national economies, and Draconian measures to control cost have hampered provider effectiveness and impacted citizen satisfaction and safety. Information Technology (IT) has helped, and is on the verge of being able to help much more. Version 3 will be a key part of the contribution of IT to healthcare's reaching new levels of
The New HL7 StandardThese IT advances are important enablers, but the most intractable barrier to their use in healthcare has been the lack of standards for exchanging fine-grained, highly heterogeneous, structured clinical data among information systems created by different entities using different technologies. Since its inception in 1987, HL7 Version 2 has enabled information exchange among systems created by different entities. Indeed, Version 2 is so widely used that it will not soon go away and the Board is committed to continuing to evolve it as long as there is a clear need. However, where users have used Version 2 for fine-grained, structured clinical data, they have accomplished it through substantial investments in bilateral negotiations adapting it to establish specifications for representing fine-grained, clinical knowledge. Efforts to aggregate on a larger scale, for research or public health have had the same issue.The strength of Version 3 messaging is precisely enabling the exchange of fine-grained data without the original research and bilateral negotiations that leading-edge organizations have attempted. Furthermore, you will find that we are reaching this in a way that is as future proof as any standards effort can be. In using the Draft Standard for Trial Use content presented here you will see that the three conceptual models that form the basis of version 3 messages: (1) The Reference Information Model (RIM), which is now an ANSI standard has evolved into a simple abstract framework which addresses the wildly heterogeneous and interlinked nature of clinical data with only six important classes. We have similarly simplified the representation of administrative data. (2) In the Domain Information Model (D-MIM) you will see how the abstract RIM is made specific to define the information elements for a domain or specialty area. (3) In the Refined Message Information Model (R-MIM) you will see how the D-MIM is refined to define the information elements of a family of messages. (4) The vocabulary model provides the tools to deal with previously intractable problems of multiple vocabularies across organizational or national boundaries. The Hierarchical Message Description is a convenient way to organize a mass of details about the contents of specific messages, providing the most authoritative list of all the constraints and detailed semantic definitions not appropriate in the more abstract representations. Finally, in the Implementable Technology Specification you will see how this information is represented as XML Schemas. These deliverables are the basis of our belief that the Version 3 Messaging standards will be easily extended over time to incorporate new standards, deal with unanticipated requirements and even address areas of standardization other than application-to-application messages. XMLWe have demonstrated the flexibility of this approach by incorporating an important new technology, XML, in mid project without revising our modeling methodology or content. We believe you will find XML a primary value in Version 3. Its transparent representation of complex data and its extensibility is creating widespread acceptance throughout the IT industry. It is the basis of an expansion in the market of middle-ware vendors providing support for application-to-application integration. While version 2.x has been adapted to XML, Version 3 fully supports the expressive capability of XML. It generates XML schemas with the logical information relationships and element names that directly relate to the HL7 models -- and hence to the concepts that analysts and programmers will have to grasp to relate Version 3 messages to their own information systems or to use them in new ways for Web browsing, XML repositories, etc.As industries have taken up XML they have come to recognize that it is not a substitute for application level semantic standards. HL7 Version 3 provides that missing ingredient, so that healthcare stakeholders can optimally reach the technological benefits of XML. |