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Background

Many systems are being developed to facilitate communication between patients and their healthcare providers. These systems are quickly emerging as extensions of messaging systems between institutions and providers, and as extensions of healthcare consumer Web sites. Without effective standards in this area, physicians who move from on messaging system to another will no longer be able to communicate effectively with patients. In addition, patients will not be able to have physicians using different systems deliver messages to their health pages. Standards are required for these systems to allow interoperability and portability of information between these messaging systems.

Mission and Charter.

This group supports the HL7 mission to create and promote its standards by ensuring that HL7 specifications for systems that empower health care providers and patients to communicate efficiently exist and are broadly implemented within health care.

The Patient/Provider Messaging Special Interest Group was created to adopt, define and extend HL7 standards and usage to improve communication between systems that provide messaging between health care providers and patients. Improved communication between providers and patients will ultimately lead to improved patient care. The intent is to ensure that message standards exist that will allow patients and health care providers to use messaging systems to communicate clinical and health care related data with each other. This group will define the profiles of existing HL7 messages and create additional messages as required. This group will use existing messages created by Orders and Observations, Patient Care, Home Health, The committee responsible for the Patient Record Architecture and other TC's as appropriate. It will ballot new messages under the authority of XXXXX and coordinate with the other committees.