HL7 Standards Activities

Usually I just twitter these reports from the TSC, and post links to the HL7 Project Database, but this week there are about seven different HL7 Standards initiatives to mention from the TSC, and one significant one from the Structured Documents Workgroup, so I thought I'd give a brief synopsis here:

First and most importantly, HL7 CDA Release 2.0 achieves a significant landmark next April, which will be its fifth "birthday" as an HL7 and ANSI approved standard.  According to ANSI rules, the standard must be reaffirmed, revised or withdrawn after five years.  So, the HL7 Structured Documents Workgroup has initiated a project to reaffirm CDA Release 2.0 as an ANSI/HL7 approved standard.  While the committee is presently working on CDA Release 3.0, we do not expect that work to be completed by the expiration of the existing CDA Release 2.0 standard.  There are a number of International projects currently utilizing CDA Release 2.0 and so their will be a ballot item in January to reaffirm the standard as is.  The project will proceed to the Structured and Semantic Design Steering Division and then to the TSC for final approval.  My expectation is that it will achieve these approvals without any difficulty.

The following three items have been approved as new standards work items by the HL7 Technical Steering Committee (TSC):

• Security Domain Analysis Model, Release 1 for Security Work Group [WG] of Foundation and Technology Steering Division [FTSD]. This project is intended to create and ballot a single HL7 Domain Analysis Model (DAM) integrating both security access control and privacy information models.
• Implementation Guide for CDA Release 2 Level 3, Neonatal Care Report by Structured Documents WG of Structure & Semantic Design Steering Division [SSD SD]. The implementation guide will support electronic reporting of an initial segment of the data elements in the CHNC Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Core Data Set (CDS) from Neonatal Intensive Care providers to Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium (CHNC).
• Implementation Guide for CDA Release 2: Procedure Note (Universal Realm) by Structured Documents WG of SSD SD. This project is to design a basic procedure note in XML as a constraint on HL7 v3 CDA r2. The note will be basic enough to be used for all procedures and will develop a sample note for endoscopy. To promote standardization and acceptance, it will be closely modeled on the current HL7 CDA Operative Note.

The TSC approved the publication or extension of the following DSTU's and Informative Documents:

• Common Terminology Services Release 2 (CTS R2) by Vocabulary Work Group of FTSD approved for publication as a DSTU
• Clinical Statement Pattern, Release 1 by Clinical Statement WG of SSD SD extended as DSTU for 12 months
• Implementation Guide for CDA Release 2 Public Health Case Reports (US Realm) by Structured Documents WG of SSD SD approved for publication
• HL7 Version 2 Implementation Guide: Clinical Genomics; Fully LOINC-Qualified Genetic Variation Model, Release 1 by Clinical Genomics WG of SSD SD approved for publication

Finally, Charlie McCay was unanimously relected as cochair of the HL7 TSC.  Congratulations Charlie!