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Thursday, October 8, 2015

Semper ascendens deinceps

Yesterday was Wednesday at the HL7 Working Group Meeting, and if you are familiar with this blog you might have been surprised that I didn't follow my usual pattern.  My excuse was that the meaningful use and standards and certification rules came out three days earlier than I had expected (after all, we have a holiday weekend coming up).

In any case, this year I'm going to do something a bit different.  I've been giving out Ad Hoc Harley awards for more than five years now, its time to mix things up a bit.  This year I'm starting something new.  The purpose of the Ad hocs was to ensure that people who would otherwise go unrecognized for their important contributions get some early recognition.  It's somewhat of an unwritten rule that most senior people in the field who've already gotten a lot of recognition probably won't get an Ad Hoc (although some contributions have warranted and received it).

I've written about being a mentor and a mentee before.  The next group of people have been some of my formative mentors.  These folks are listed in the order that I met them, rather than any other.

Dr. Dan Russler was one of my first mentors in HL7.  He taught me a great deal about problem oriented medical records, the details behind the HL7 Concern and Condition models, and introduced me to the formative work of Dr. Larry Weed.  He and I cochaired Patient Care Coordination in the early years, and he was also very involved in early work on the Care Record Summary and the Continuity of Care Document.  Dan's a teacher now, and always was.

Dr. Susan Matney is a nurse, informaticist and vocabularist extraordinaire.  She taught me a great deal of what I know about nursing AND nursing vocabularies, including CCC, NANDA, NIC, NOC and SNOMED CT.  She was instrumental in some of the early HITSP work on addressing nursing vocabulary, and that was also formative in IHE and elsewhere.  She has a recently minted Ph.D., which is really only another form of belated recognition of her contributions.

Dr. Todd Rothenhaus is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, and one of the first CMIO's I'd ever worked with directly (although that title came after we worked together).  With his help, IHE produced a family of profiles around emergency care, including ED Referral (EDR), Emergency Department Encounter Summary (EDES), and moved into a round of profiles on emergency transport.

Dr. Laura Heerman-Langford taught me how to look through the eyes of a user of specifications, and is another who also taught me a great deal about nursing. When she first came to IHE Patient Care Coordination, she'd already had a long tenure in HL7 Patient Care (where she is still cochair).  Even with her great technical knowledge, she has always been looking at work from the eyes of someone who will have to use it.  While this is almost constantly threatening to an author, she's always been able to provide her insights in a way that enabled the best outcomes: Clearer and more comprehensible specifications.

Having again violated conventions by introducing the recipients, I'll now tell you what the award is.

Dr.'s Russler, Matney, Rothenhaus and Heerman-Langford are hereby inducted into the 2015 class of the Ladies and Lords of the Ad Hoc Harley.  Like fellowships, this is an exclusive club, and it does have some limitations on membership.  Ladies and Lords must already have been recognized in the past for their contrinbutions (this must not be the first recognition), and their contributions must be long-term and sustaining.  I'm not sure that this will be an annual thing (that would be too predictable for me), but it will be repeated.

2015 Ladies and Lords of the Ad Hoc Harley

Dan Russler, Susan Matney, Todd Rothenhaus and Laura Heerman-Langford
Semper ascendens deinceps
(Ever riding forward)


P.S. As with similar recognitions, this one comes with its own set of letters you can apply after your name, of similar stature with FHL7, FACMImimi, and now LLAHH

1 comment:

  1. Wow, thanks. I had no idea. I’m still fighting the nursing terminology fight as you and I continue the interoperability fight. Once a soldier, always a soldier. I too consider you a mentor.

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