May 1, 2001 HL7
On May 9th and 10th at the ebXML Vienna Meeting, the ebXML Proof of Concept (POC) Project Team will demonstrate a working model of open information exchange for the healthcare industry using Health Level Seven (HL7) XML specifications and sample data. The HL7 messages and documents will be the payloads within ebXML transport and routing (TR&P) envelopes creating a healthcare exchange scenario for the Internet.
The healthcare scenario in the ebXML POC will start with a patient visit to a physician’s office. The physician’s office will send a registration message pre-admitting the patient to a hospital for testing. At the hospital, the patient will be examined and lab work will be ordered, the lab order being transmitted via ebXML to a remote laboratory. The record of the original patient encounter in the physician’s office, plus the registration message, lab order and lab results will be sent to two clinical information portals where the virtual patient record can be collected and accessed.
The HL7 payloads are XML documents from HL7’s Version 3 (HL7 V3) standard, which covers clinical and administrative information exchange. The first part of HL7 V3, the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), received ANSI certification in November, 2000, and is being implemented by major providers in the US, Canada and Germany and by a wide spectrum of healthcare vendors. The HL7 V3 datatypes are currently being balloted and the first set of V3 messaging specifications will come to ballot by year’s end. The HL7 documents are using controlled vocabulary from SNOMEDÒ , the Systematized Nomenclature for Medicine developed by the College of American of Pathologists and made available for this demonstration by special agreement.
Eight vendors will participate directly in the healthcare track of the ebXML POC, among them HL7 members Care Data Systems and Iona. In addition, HL7 received significant support from vendor-member Sun Microsystems to make possible our participation in the Proof of Concept. Care Data will provide a clinical data repository that will receive and display the messages and documents transferred via ebXML. The physician’s office link will demonstrate use of XML digital signature specification with ebXML.
