Question: Does HL7 free IP mean open?

Apr 12, 2013

Question

Now that the HL7 IP is free, can I just send someone I am working with a copy of the specification?

Answer

No. While the IP is now licensed as free for use, it’s not actually open. In particular, only HL7 is allowed to distribute the specifications themselves. So you’ll have to direct your trading partners to the HL7 website to get a copy for themselves.

This is really to drive membership. HL7 has a real legitimate case for driving membership - developing the standard isn’t cheap, and has to be paid for somehow. In the absence of selling the standard, rent has to be extracted from somewhere.

There is an unfortunate corollary of this though: under the current rules, no one is allowed to offer a web site or a mobile app that offers enhanced additional views of the HL7 standard (like this, this, or this, though my read of the fine print is that this is allowed. However I’m not sure about this, or this). But a mobile application that provided good views of this stuff would be greatly prized by many implementers. As you can see, there’s going to be some developments in this space, so I’ll revisit this post when that happens.

Note: the FHIR specification is not affected by all this - it remains open, and redistribution is not under any restrictions at all.