Public Health at Health Level Seven (HL7)

Health Level Seven (HL7) is a American National Standards Institute (ANSI) -accredited Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) focusing on clinical and administrative data. Its standards are widely recognized and highly successful in the healthcare arena. The Public Health and Emergency Response Special Interest Group (PHER SIG) is a volunteer group that works on HL7 standards related to public health. Although HL7 Version 2 is the widely implemented electronic data communications standard in U.S. Healthcare, PHER SIG focusses most of its energy on HL7 Version 3. V3 is widely adopted in other parts of the world such as Canada and Europe, but has not made substantial inroads in the United States due to the prevalence of the Version 2 installed base. However, even in the United States, V3 holds promise in “greenfield” areas that are not well addressed by current Version 2 messaging paradigms, for instance, Decision Support. The approach of the PHER SIG is to work with international members from projects such as Canadian Health Infoway to establish its V3 standards. In addition, PHER SIG has started Domain Analysis Models (DAMs) in areas such as Immunizations, TB and Vital Statistics to describe a public health domain in use case terms. These DAMs then become vehicles for harmonizing V2 and V3 paradigms and supporting new interoperability techniques. PHER is also bringing together related organizations such as HITSP, IHE and other groups within HL7 around public health topics such as immunizations, in order to create an integrated and interoperable approach.