Challenges funding standards development

Aug 9, 2013

My good friend Dave Shaver writes:

The key is that the benefits of HL7 are often enjoyed by parts of the food chain that do not directly fund its development

Read the whole post - worth your time if you are remotely interested in standards development in healthcare.

I think that what makes something a standard is the very fact that benefits are accrued somewhere else than where the cost is incurred. What this means to me is that all models of standard development are financially broken. The common refrain that you often hear around HL7: “All models are wrong, but some are useful” (George Box) is even more applicable to HL7 itself:

Any funding model is wrong.

But some are useful - at least one, we can hope.

However I remain concerned that HL7 have changed their funding model without fundamentally changing what they are as an organisation - the two things were matched together, and now we have dissonance. Following Kuhn, then, that would mean that a pradigm shift is in the way. Well, we can only hope. Because right now, too many members are hung up on irrelevant internal disputes about how control and resources are divided up (Affiliates, US affiliate…).

This whole question will soon become irrelevant if the organisation doesn’t fundamentally re-assess it’s whole purpose and structure. Some in HL7 - including in the leadership team - understand that this has to happen, and are working towards it. But too many insiders (volunteers, I’m looking at us) are still stuck on the first point - dividing up the spoils. But that’s a waste of time if the size of the spoils starts shrinking rapidly, as it might very well do in the future if a paradigm shift doesn’t come.