HL7 UK Contributions in HL7.org

HL7 UK is an affiliate organisation to HL7. HL7 UK currently have several members actively involved in HL7 leadership positions. A respectable contingent of UK members also regularly attend the Working Group Meetings, where the Technical Committees and Special Interest Groups meet.

HL7 UK Members with leadership positions in HL7.org.

About my role

Charlie McCay
Chair of Technical Steering Committee
Term Expires: Dec 2011

The role of the HL7 Technical Steering Committee is the overseeing and coordinating the technical efforts contributed by the HL7 participants, who make up the HL7 Working Group, and assuring that the efforts of the Working Group are focused on the overall HL7 mission. As chair of the committee I sit on the HL7 board, and the HL7 Advisory Council. This gives continuity through from strategy setting, to practical implementation.

At a high level this means building on the success of HL7 as a place develop and maintain international standards for healthcare interoperability. In detail it means ensuring that practical balloting and publication issues get resolved efficiently, that projects have clearer definition and visibility so that they deliver to schedule, and that there is a work group and admin framework in place to support the development and use of the suite HL7 standards.

Melvin Reynolds
Health Care Devices Co-Chair
Term Expires: Jan 2010

Melvin Reynolds was appointed Co-Chair of the Healthcare Devices (DEV) Working Group (WG)  in the new 'Expert' domain. In practical terms this appointment is simply a regularisation of the existing situation where he and Todd Cooper (the other active Co-Chair) organised the meetings which have been since the inception of the group held jointly with ISO TC215 WG7 and IEEE11073.

Rik Smithies
Clinical Statement Co-Chair
Term Expires: Jan 2011

The Clinical Statement workgroup’s objective is to establish a common and consistent model to express clinical data, regardless of the domain or communication method.

It promotes consistent use of terminology and modelling style when using the HL7 RIM and encourages standardisation across different workgroups.

Members of Orders & Observations, Patient Care and Structured Documents founded the project, with Pharmacy, Laboratory and others contributing to the work.

In 2007 we achieved a major milestone by completing the Clinical Statement draft standard that is currently in place. Work is now underway to make the pattern a normative standard. It is hoped that this will form a key component of the next release of the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA).

Ian Townend
Patient Care Co-Chair
Term Expires: May 2011

I think that the committee has a number of areas of interest:

• continuing to develop the care provision messages and current ballot content
  
• working on the development of detailed clinical models
  
• working with other committees to develop HL7 templates for use