Publish Box goes here

Background (Informative)

What is HL7?

Established in 1987, Health Level Seven (HL7) is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited, not-for-profit standards-development organization, whose mission is to provide standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information; support clinical practice; and support the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. ANSI accreditation, coupled with HL7's own procedures, dictates that any standard published by HL7 and submitted to ANSI for approval, be developed and ratified by a process that adheres to ANSI's procedures for open consensus and meets a balance of interest requirement by attaining near equal participation in the voting process by the various constituencies that are materially affected by the standard (e.g., vendors, providers, government agencies, consultants, non-profit organizations). This balance of interest goal ensures that a particular constituency is neither refused participation nor is it allowed to dominate the development and ratification of a proposed standard. More information and background on ANSI is available on their website at: http://www.ANSI.org

The HL7 Electronic Health Records Work Group

The HL7 Electronic Health Records Special Interest Group (EHR SIG) was established in the spring of 2002. In the spring of 2003 the HL7 group began efforts to develop a standardized functional specification for Electronic Health Records Systems (EHR-S). In May 2004 the SIG was promoted to a full HL7 Technical Committee, becoming the EHR TC. The EHR TC is intended primarily to serve as a body which promotes the uptake of Electronic Health Record (EHR) implementation by standardizing the functions that may be present, based on user selection, in an EHR-S. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Veterans Health Administration, the Health Information Management Systems Society and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in a public-private partnership, approached HL7 to accelerate their existing work to develop a consensus standard to define the functions of an EHR-S. HL7, through its EHR SIG, responded by developing an EHR-S Functional Model that passed ballot as a Draft Standard for Trial Use (DSTU) in April 2004. The Functional Model DSTU was published and formally registered with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in July 2004. The Functional Model was then balloted and passed as a normative standard as part of the January 2007 HL7 Work Group Meeting and is now registered as a normative standard with ANSI Learning important lessons from the ballot process, a Functional Model with a clearer, more simplified list of functions, has been created. The HL7 EHR System Functional Model provides a reference list of functions that may be present in an Electronic Health Record System (EHR-S). The Function List is described from a user perspective with the intent to enable consistent expression of system functionality. This EHR-S Model, through the creation of Functional Profiles, enables a standardized description and common understanding of functions sought or available in a given setting (e.g. intensive care, cardiology, office practice in one country or primary care in another country).