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HL7 Version 2.5 Approved as International Standard | News | Healthcare Informatics.Well if you haven't heard of this standards setting organization yet, you will soon. They are working on the standards which provide the "glue" for the NHIN to work.

In other words, if we want "interoperability" between EHRs (which we do otherwise what is the point?) then all of these products will have to talk the same language. That language is likely to be the HL7 XML messaging standards. Evidently, the ISO has just blessed HL7 2.5 as an international standard:

Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA ? September 21, 2009 ? Health Level Seven® (HL7®), the global authority for interoperability and standards in healthcare information technology with members in 57 countries, today announced its Version 2.5 messaging standard has been approved as an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

HL7 Version 2.5 allows interoperability between electronic health record systems, practice management systems, laboratory IT systems, dietary, pharmacy and billing systems. It serves as a vehicle for disparate healthcare IT systems, applications and data architectures operating in diverse-system environments to communicate with each other. It is designed to support a central patient care system, as well as a more distributed environment where data resides in departmental systems.

This is a much bigger deal than most in the healthcare industry are aware of. The pieces of this puzzle are coming together and they have nothing to do with "healthcare reform" and everything to do with the HITECH Act that was signed into law in February 2009. It is already a done deal. All this brouhaha over healthcare reform, while important in its own right, does not change the HITECH Act in the slightest.

In order for HL7 to function as the "lingua franca" of EHR communications then it will have to support the privacy and security standards mandated by HITECH (e.g. encryption as recently addressed in HHS' Interim Final Rule on Breach Notification). There is a freight train coming and headed directly toward the healthcare industry, and nothing is in its it way to slow it down. It's a trojan horse that is already inside the city walls.

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