Now this makes sense – Health Level Seven (HL7) and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO), the provider of standardized clinical terminology, are working together to eliminate gaps and overlaps between the HL7 and IHTSDO standards.
The terms of the agreement complement both organizations’ involvement in the Joint Initiative on SDO Global Health Informatics Standardization, which was established to enable common, timely health informatics standards by addressing counterproductive standardization efforts.
As mentioned by HL7 Chair-elect Bob Dolin, MD, “While HL7 and SMOMED have worked together for several years, their collaboration was informal and without oversight. As a result, the independently developed standards were not harmonized and often were not easily integrated. Coordinating the efforts of these two standards groups at the start, rather than at the end of the standards development process, is a major step forward in the industry’s goal of seamless interoperability.”
John Gutai, IHTSDO’s chief technical architect added that the group looks forward to working in cooperation with HL7 and other standards bodies to achieve this, within the context of the ISO/TC215 Joint Initiative on SDO Global Health Informatics Standardization.
Tightening of standards (in a positive manner) will definitely serves the industry well, especially with standardized clinical terminology included in, its going to make integration of HIS to clinical information systems and ultimately to the EMR (with CCOPE) alot easier. In the meantime before that happens, I reckon it will be a rocky journal!
BinaryHealthCare (BNHC) 