HL7 Fresh Look Task Force

May 17, 2011

The HL7 board has authorized a new “Fresh Look” Task Force to examine the best ways we can create interoperability solutions, with no pre-conditions on what those solutions might be.   The idea is that, knowing what we now know from what has already been created within HL7 and by other groups outside of HL7, what would be our best approach to interoperability solutions? I have accepted an invitation to be a member of this task force. It’s my belief that this is a real fresh look; none of the sacred cows are off the table for re-examination.

What’s the task force going to focus on?

I worry that the fresh look will get distracted into arguing about information modeling methodology. HL7 folks are real good at that (I am too). We do need to do that, but to my way of thinking, that’s not our problem, and we can’t get distracted by that.

Instead, I believe that we should devote time to considering how we assess “success” in a fresh look. What do we are we trying to do? What do our customers want? What exchanges are we trying to serve? Are we doing syntax or semantics? Does the market even want semantics? HL7 has two quite different stakeholders in vendors and large programs - can they agree on what they want?

Side Note:Vendors want “Drive by Interoperability”, large programs want something rather different. I think I’ll write a whole post about that (see here).

Note that this is a outgrowth of the v2/v3/cda taskforce - so it’s not about choosing between them. Which is why I don’t want it to be (just) about information modeling.

So who is going to be consulted?

Well, I don’t currently know who else is on the task force (Stan Huff is lead). But I know who’s being consulted. You are. Please think about what I have above. What do you want from HL7? What does your company / government / provider want from HL7? How would we (HL7) know whether we have succeeded?

Either comment here on this post, or write a blog post somewhere else, and let me know about it, and I’ll add a link below. If there’s enough interest, I’ll host a wiki for comments. Stan says, “Please ask for input from everyone,”  so pass this link on - we want as many people to comment as possible. Even Barry Smith and Thomas Beale ;-). (Actually, seriously, I had a long chat to Tom about this last night, and I’ll be adding another post that tries to capture some of what we talked about.)

I’m all ears…