The group will also define the procedures for administering a meta-data repository to serve as the home for templates defined by HL7 bodies, HL7 members, and other parties, and will develop procedures and educational material to guide interested parties in the development of HL7 templates.

Vocabulary
HL7 learned long ago that while data can be exchanged between systems, its usefulness is compromised unless there is a shared, well defined, and unambiguous knowledge of the meaning of the data transferred. Since much of the data being transferred is coded, either by HL7 or other organizations, HL7 began a focused effort via the formation of the Vocabulary Technical Committee to organize and maintain vocabulary terms used in its messages.

This group is working to provide an organization and repository for maintaining a coded vocabulary that, when used in conjunction with HL7 and related standards, will enable the exchange of clinical data and information so that sending and receiving systems have a shared, well defined, and unambiguous knowledge of the meaning of the data transferred.

The purpose of the exchange of clinical data includes, but is not limited to: provision of clinical care, support of clinical and administrative research, execution of automated transaction oriented decision logic (medical logic modules), support of outcomes research, support of clinical trials, and to support data reporting to government and other authorized third parties. To achieve this goal, the Vocabulary Technical Committee will work cooperatively with all other groups that have an interest in coded vocabularies used in clinical computing. Some of the groups that we will seek to work closely with include: standards development organizations, creators and maintainers of vocabularies, government agencies and regulatory bodies, clinical professional specialty groups, vocabulary content providers, and vocabulary tool vendors.

XML
Health Level Seven has been actively working with XML technology since the formation of the SGML/XML Special Interest Group in September of 1996. Since that time, the SGML/XML group has evolved into two separate groups: