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1.13 R6 Ballot Roadmap

Responsible Owner: FHIR Infrastructure Work Group

Standards Status: Informative

Welcome to the first full ballot of FHIR Release 6 (R6).

This ballot is a Normative ballot - all of the specification is being balloted as a full Normative ANSI Standard. As such, balloters should note the following about the ballot process:

• As a normative standard, any substantive changes - that is, changes that impact on implementations - must be approved by the ballot - in other words, reballot is required
• You must sign up for the first ballot to participate in later ballots; if you do not have time to participate for a round of balloting, please abstain so that quorum levels are met

Balloters should keep the following in mind about ballot scope:

• Some of the content in this ballot is earmarked to move to terminology.hl7.org (THO). FMG's position is that moving valuesets from the specification to THO is not itself a substantive change
• Moving CodeSystems from core to THO is also only a substantive changes if (a) the CodeSystem is bound to a Coding, CodeableConcept, or CodeableReference, and (b) the URL changes
• Implicit in that is that forcing minor changes in URLs etc on Implementation Guides is not itself substantive
• The cross version comparisons, difference analysis, structure maps and transforms have not been updated for this ballot. This will be done for the next ballot

And these notes about breaking changes:

• This specification is fully normative, so once this ballot is complete, no breaking changes are allowed in future publications
• Technically, this is 'forwards' compatibility: that existing implementations will not have to change for future versions. However, in practice, whether this is true depends on implementation choices. As such, the Rules for Inter-version Compatibility are of particular importance for balloters to consider
• If content was normative in R4, then this specification is not allowed to contain breaking changes to that content under the rules published in this version, so balloters should pay particular attention to these areas
• As R5 was not normative, breaking changes from R5 are allowed
• Other parts of the specification may contain breaking changes from previous versions

Balloter's attention is drawn to three useful links at the bottom of every page:

These are very useful when preparing ballot comments.

1.13.1 Details of Changes in this version

This section lists the major changes between this version and the last version (draft ballot 3). Note that there thousands of changes between this version and the last version, so there's no list of all changes.

• Immature resources and other artifacts have been moved out of this specification into other IGs, often labelled as 'incubator IGs'. Here's the list:
  • BiologicallyDerivedProductDispense
  • ChargeItem
  • ChargeItemDefinition
  • Citation Resource
  • DeviceDispense
  • DeviceUsage
  • EncounterHistory
  • GraphDefinition
  • ImmunizationEvaluation
  • ImmunizationRecommendation
  • InventoryItem
  • InventoryReport
  • PersonalRelationship
  • SupplyDelivery
  • SupplyRequest
  • TestPlan
  • TestReport
  • TestScript
  • Transport
  • VerificationResult
  • CapabilityStatement.$subset
  • DocumentReCapabilityStatementference.$conforms
  • CapabilityStatement.$implements
  • DocumentReference.$generate
  • SpecimenDefinition.$apply
  • ChargeDefinition.$apply
  • Resource.$graph
  • Resource.$meta
  • Resource.$meta-add
  • Resource.$meta-delete
  • Asynchronous Bulk Data Request
  • Asynchronous Bundle Request

1.13.2 The FHIR R6 Ballot Process

This ballot is using HL7's Jira balloting process . As such, ballot comments will need to be submitted in Jira and, in general, balloting spreadsheets will not be used. Some organizational and affiliate balloters may continue to use spreadsheets but will be responsible for importing them into Jira themselves and may have slightly different processes for consolidating ballots to take that into account. The ballot desktop will be used for voter registration but will not be available for vote submission. Voters are encouraged to view the recorded tutorial on Jira balloting in addition to reading through the instructions on submitting Jira feedback and using Jira balloting . A webinar will be held part-way through the ballot cycle to provide an opportunity to ask questions about the process. Questions can also be raised on the Jira/Confluence stream on http://chat.fhir.org.

When submitting your ballot feedback, if you have a general comment on something that you see occurring multiple times, please include at least a couple of specific locations where you see the issue. As much as possible, capture each separate concern as a distinct tracker item ; it makes our job of reconciling much easier. Also, don't forget to fill in the section numbers (gray numbers to the left of each heading) and URLs. Only one URL should be placed in the "url" element or column. If you want to reference additional URLs, include them in the text of your ballot comment.

If you have questions that are interfering with the ability to review the specification or submit ballot comments, please contact one of the co-chairs of the FHIR Management Group: Bryn Rhodes or Sarah Gaunt.

Thanks for taking the time to review the FHIR specification. We appreciate any feedback you can provide.