Thursday, January 21, 2016

Is this your home or are you just visiting?

It's fairly common in standards work groups and organizations to see fluctuating membership depending on the topic currently under consideration.  Some people are interested in the topic, rather than the work group (or SDO), and others vice versa.  I had just finished visiting with CDS on a project that I'm working on for HSI today, when I realized that the notion of "visiting" and the notion of "home" really impacted how I dealt with the work group.

Home is where you go when you have nothing more urgent to do.  But it also describes who can call on you when something urgent comes up, or who will wait for you to become available when they know they need you.

Just visiting are those places where you go because they are working on something of interest to you, but they don't always do that.

How you deal with standards differs depending on whether you are home or just visiting.  When you are home, you have a bit more leeway.  When you are just visiting, you have to work with the group that you are visiting, and be more accommodating towards their needs.

HL7 is home.  IHE is home. HL7 Structure Documents is home.  IHE Patient Care Coordination is home (though it used to be IT Infrastructure). Any group I co-chair is home. In HL7 more and more, FHIR is becoming another home, and may push me into being more of  visitor to Structured Documents, but hasn't yet.  It really depends on how much attention SD pays to FHIR.  Healthcare Standards Integration is kind of home, sort of like an extended family vacation home though, in part because it is still nascent.  Attachments is kind of like my kids house.  I'm just visiting, but I get many of the benefits of being home.  S&I Framework projects are about just visiting.  Because of the short length of these projects (most are 1-3 years), it's hard to "setup house".  HL7 CDS is a close friends house -- I'm still just visiting, but we know each other pretty well, and I know where the beer and glasses are kept.

As I shift roles, I expect that it may influence where home is in the coming years.

Where is your home?  Are you planning on moving anytime soon?

   Keith



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