Why do I need an HL7 license? How do I get one?

Jul 22, 2011

The comments in the thread on a prior post lead to someone submitting this question:

I have been developing HL7 based applicaitons without being a member of an HL7 organization. This week I have just realised that I may be in breach of some sort of license! Oops! My questions are: Where does one find out that this is a requirement? Why is it a requirement? I thought the HL7 standard was open. There are enough books and other resources one can obtain to be able to build solutions. Compliance checking through AHML is free (if one chooses to do so). Opensource solutions such as HAPI and NHAPI can be obtained free (and I have used these as well as rolling my own). I can understand the need to pay for the official HL7 standards and the AS documentation but not why it is necessary to pay to be able to develop an application (even though the cost is relatively low).

HL7 is not an open standard. (note that many HL7 members - including me - think this is appalling, and HL7 is once again reconsidering this position). So, technically, you need to pay for the official standards. The books and other resources are kind of in a grey zone.

I don’t know what the status of HAPI is. I expect that all the developers are members, as are the developers of any software that uses HAPI.

In general, HL7 figures that you can’t develop conformant standards without needing to actually buy the standards. So it’s the IP that’s licensed, not the pages of the standards.

A few relevant links:

Note that HL7 used to give older versions away, but no longer does so

Actually, after reading that, I have a better idea. Health Intersections Pty/Ltd has an Organizational Membership of HL7 International. I’m prepared to employ anyone in the world who is writing open source HL7 solutions for A$1/year. That will fully license their open source development. Anyone who’s interested in that, please contact me privately at [email protected]