Saturday, June 4, 2011

Harmonization Efforts for Health Information Exchange


A lot of efforts are going on the harmonize the various standards available for healthcare information exchange.

A sample worklist from the public domain is available at: HL7 TSC Wiki

In the recent Working Group Meeting of HL7 at Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA, IHTSDO (SNOMED-CT) representatives took active part and are likely to have formal collaborations soon. Earlier IHTSDO had announced a collaborative arrangement with the World Health Organization (WHO) to harmonize WHO classifications and SNOMED CT for the benefit of citizens around the world. ICD-11 - that is due by 2015 - will have the benefits arising out of WHO and IHTSDO having worked on a collaborative arrangement to link the WHO Family of Classifications and the Standardized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). This arrangement enables the linkage of terminologies and classifications. In the era of computerization of health information and electronic health records, it represents a major achievement.