Letter From The Chair

HL7 Goes International, Again!

As we look forward to our second Working Group Meeting in Europe in as many years, I’m reminded of the success of the May 2005 meeting in Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands. There was admittedly some anxiety over holding a meeting outside the United States, but it proved to be one of our better meetings from the perspective of both attendance and accomplishments.

Our meeting in San Diego in January produced several milestones for HL7, relevant to both enhancing and expanding our standards, and furthering our collaborative efforts with other SDOs. I’m sure by now you’ve seen the press releases addressing successful ballot of the Continuity of Care Document (CCD®), an implementation of the ASTM Continuity of Care Record (CCR) under the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture, a Version 3 standard for the exchange of documents. We also successfully concluded a final ballot on Version 2.6 of our venerable messaging standard.

I’m looking forward to continuing our efforts related to both Version 2 and our family of Version 3 standards in Cologne. I’m particularly enthusiastic about the increased participation of our Affiliates afforded by this wonderful venue. By the same token, if Noordwijkerhout was any indication, I’m expecting a large US contingent as well. Holding this meeting in Europe is also an indication of our commitment to HL7 as an international standards development organization.

Holding meetings outside the United States is yet another facet of our continuing move forward with the implementation of our strategic initiatives and transition to the new HL7. One of the observations made by the strategic initiatives task force was the need to better project an international image of HL7. These meetings not only fulfill that need, but also serve to facilitate the growth and visibility of our Affiliates. We now have 28 Affiliates, having ratified the petition from Romania at the January meeting, and the Affiliates Council is currently reviewing a petition from Austria.

Current plans call for one meeting a year to be held outside the US. Our 2008 Plenary and Working Group Meeting will be held in Vancouver, Canada. We’re planning on visiting our Asian Affiliates for the first time in 2009 and are currently exploring having a meeting in Kyoto, Japan. This is exciting news and bodes well for the continued success of HL7, both nationally and internationally. But for now, I hope all of you will be able to join us in Cologne and experience some wonderful Deutscher Gastfreundlichkeit, Fassbier, und Schnitzel while we continue to develop HL7, the international standard for healthcare data interchange.