Health level 7

HL7 was founded in 1987 and was accredited by the Standard Development Organization (SDO) by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in 1994. Standard was created mostly by clinical interface experts, and was designed to provide a framework in which data could be exchanged between distinct clinical systems. HL7 international community has compiled a collection of message formats and related clinical standards that loosely define an ideal presentation of clinical information, and together the standards prove a framework in which data may be exchanged. HL7 standard is broadly divided into 2 categorizes, version 2 (V2), which is widely used, and that provides eighty percent of the interface framework, and Version 3 (V3) which is not as widely used. HL7 is a language that is modeled as 7 layers that consists of the physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation and application. HL7 plans to make standards available free for public good, with increasing government demand for standards that do not require a licensing fee, to move toward free standards. The policy will take effect in the first quarter of 2013. HL7 plans to make its consensus driven standards the best and most widely used in healthcare said Charles Jeff, CEO of HL7. The CEO believes that eliminating barrier to implementation, the organization will be close to their goal. With the approach of lean thinking the goal will be that healthcare IT can reduce costs and improve the quality of care. The plan to make the standards free is one of the most significant standards developments in the past decade. It ensures that every stakeholder will have ready access to the content standards they need for meaningful use. Meaningful use is a qualification to receive federal funding for health information technology. According to the provisions of the Healthcare information Technology Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), healthcare organization that have achieved meaningful use by 2011 will be eligible for incentive payments, and those who have failed to achieve that standard by 2015 may be penalized. In terms of HL7 typically does is that it provides interoperability, the ability of two or more system or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. This by all means is not a small task; it involves matching computers by work, and requires a lot of testing. Several of the HL7 standards are grouped intro reference categories based on the standards they provide. The primary standards are the most popular because they are vital for systems integrations and compliance. The primary houses the most frequently used and in demand standards of all the different categories. Next, the foundational standards provide the fundamental tools that are used as stepping-stones to build the standards as a whole. This standard also provides the technology infrastructure that users of the HLu7 standards must manage. The messaging and document standards for clinical specialties and groups are under the clinical and administrative domains. These standards are typically used after the primary standards for organization are complete. In addition, EHR profiles are standards that provide functional models and profiles that allow the management of electronic health records, a vital standard to the HL7 system. The implementation of support documents is also used with the existing standards; all these documents serve as addition material for the other standards. HL7 consists of the complete life cycle of a standards specification including the development, adoption, market recognition, utilization and adherence. Many businesses’ use the HL7 standards requires a paid organizational membership in HL7 inc. These members can thus access standards for free and non-members have the opportunity to buy the standards from HL7 or ANSI. There are two primary methods of moving clinical date in a hospital or clinic, point-to-point interfacing or interface engine interfacing. Point-to-point provides a direct connection between two exact applications while interface engine provides a way to leverage a set of interfaces between several applications. Having an HL7 interface engine has become critically vital to the health care environment we have today. First, it gives much more control to an organization and saves money and time. It does this by reducing the required number of export and import endpoints, allows the reuse of data between applications while providing an easier method to interface a new or replaced application. Many facilities that are attempting to create a health care environment that is fully integrated use this interface engine model and find that it is in fact much less expensive and takes a lot less time to implement because the engine provides more data leveraging. In addition, this integrated engine requires less time and money to maintain and monitor the interfaces because of the availability of centralized monitoring. Concisely put, the point-to-point interfacing proved to be a lot more time consuming and redundant while the interface engine method provided a much easier method to interface a new of replaced application.