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What
is HL7?
Health Level Seven is one of several ANSI-accredited Standards
Developing Organizations (SDOs) operating in the healthcare arena.
Most SDOs produce standards (sometimes called specifications or protocols)
for a particular healthcare domain such as pharmacy, medical devices,
imaging or insurance (claims processing) transactions. Health Level
Seven¡¦s domain is clinical and administrative data. Our mission is
to: "To provide standards for the exchange, management and integration
of data that support clinical patient care and the management, delivery
and evaluation of healthcare services. Specifically, to create flexible,
cost effective approaches, standards, guidelines, methodologies, and
related services for interoperability between healthcare information
systems."
Headquartered in Ann Arbor, MI, Health Level Seven is like most
of the other SDOs in that it is a not-for-profit volunteer organization.
Its members-- providers, vendors, payers, consultants, government
groups and others who have an interest in the development and advancement
of clinical and administrative standards for healthcare¡Xdevelop
the standards. Like all ANSI-accredited SDOs, Health Level Seven
adheres to a strict and well-defined set of operating procedures
that ensures consensus, openness and balance of interest.
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| A frequent misconception
about Health Level Seven (and presumably about the other SDOs) is
that it develops software. In reality, Health Level Seven develops
specifications, the most widely used being a messaging standard
that enables disparate healthcare applications to exchange keys
sets of clinical and administrative data.
Members of Health Level Seven are known collectively as the Working
Group, which is organized into technical committees and special
interest groups. The technical committees are directly responsible
for the content of the Standards. Special interest groups serve
as a test bed for exploring new areas that may need coverage in
HL7¡¦s published standards. A list of the technical committees and
special interest groups as well as their missions, scopes and current
leadership is available on this web site.
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