Friday, February 17, 2006

Is there anything positive to be said about HL7 V3 ?

Barry Smith said...

I think we can probably leave it to the HL7's own marketing arm to document positive features of HL7 V3.

I think also that, in the age of internet services, it is becoming increasingly unclear whether the technology of messaging standards is needed at all. But even leaving this aside, HL7 V2 is a reasonably good messaging standard for its scope (mainly pathology results and imaging), and it is ten times simpler than HL7 V3 and already quite widely implemented. Where, then, is the business case for Version 3?

As to the Electronic Health Record, we must bear in mind that HL7 itself does not in fact have an EHR solution. And I am tempted to say that more or less anything that has been designed in response to EHR requirements would represent an improvement on something which does not exist.

1 comment:

Lavi said...

I feel that the way things are going the "means"( to serve the "End" i.e better healthcare) are getting so complex that they are becoming an "End" in themself. It is a classic case of a tail wagging the dog! End result - healthcare becoming more and more expensive for the poor patient. I think it is time we stepped back to relook at how much needs to be the focus on IT in relation to core healthcare practices.
rgds,
Dr Lavanian MD