Some random news items

1. Exciting stuff from Grahame Grieve at Health Intersections. Summary: "HL7 v3 has failed".

2. And here an email of September 18 from Thomas Beale (with emphasis added by me) responding to Grahame's description of developments regarding RFH:

At the HL7 meeting last week in San Diego, Grahame Grieve presented something called Resources for Healthcare (RFH), essentially a replacement model for much of HL7v3, for 'practical use'. The driver was the well-known over-complexity of HL7v3. According to his report on the reception of RFH at the HL7 meeting, there appears to be a real appetite for change at HL7, which is good to see.

3. And an announcement from Gartner: HL7 V3 Messaging "has fallen off the hype cycle".

Snippets from the analysis by Wes Rishel in the current Gartner Hype Cycle report:

The V3 Messages (V3M) standard was conceived as being the direct analog of the Version 2 Messages standard — that is, XML documents designed to support the information necessary to be transferred when a specific event occurs, such as a patient being admitted or a lab result being approved for delivery to the provider. ... we describe the messaging part of the V3 suite as "obsolete before the plateau."... uptake has been so small and narrow that we cannot justify leaving V3M on the Hype Cycle.
Business Impact: V3M will not have impact except, perhaps, in a few locales.
Market Penetration: 1% to 5% of target audience

4. What is an 'Implementation Guide'

HL7 seems not to know how to define 'Implementation Guide' even as it pertains to its own standards:

Discussions with others revealed that there is not really any specific definition as to what an Implementation Guide is. The general impression is that anything that constrains a model is an implementation guide. The level of constraint is determined by the level of the guide (i.e. normative of informative). Given this fuzziness, calling this an implementation guide is not out of line with common use. (See here)

5. And finally this:

From: "Helen Stevens Love"
Subject: HL7 International Council Proxies - San Diego WGM
Date: 8 september 2011 21:53:09 GMT+02:00
To: "HL7 Affiliate Council"

Dear International Council Members,
Based on the pre-registered attendees for the upcoming San Diego meeting we may fail to reach quorum for our Council meetings. ...