EHRs or Electronic Health Records is one of the most amazing inventions that health care industry has been blessed with in the recent years. It is one of the software which is highly popular and in demand nowadays due to its several benefits. It is necessary to build these software against certain protocols or standards so that the patients or the medical units incorporating the same are able to use it with proper guidance and technological support.
HL7 standards are set up mainly for the EHRs, for successful exchanging of the patient’s clinical data from one medical unit to another and for setting up the language for the software and a smooth and seamless integration among the codes and system interaction. These HL7 standards help in providing the medical practitioner’s decision and action along with management, delivery, and evaluation of health services which make it widely used in the world in the recent days and is also getting increasingly incorporated in many of the medical units.
History of HL7 Standards
It was founded in 1987 by members from about 50 countries and was accredited by American National Standards Institute in 1994 by a non-profit organisation. The standardized instructions were built with the help of a multi-year balloting system where each member would vote and comment in successive balloting rounds as long as the until negative comments get eliminated and draft standards would continue being set up for being agreed upon. The “7” in HL7 stands for Layer 7 in Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model, which is the final application layer in the communication model the International Organization for Standardization developed for OSI.
In May 2016, the HL7 Governance and Operations Manual (GOM) has been updated to rename Standards for Trial Use. Before this, the phrase was for the same was "Draft Standards for Trial Use”. As a result, both DSTU and STU names show up in the list of Trial Use Standards.
Now coming to the HL7 messaging standard, it helps in transferring the data across the medical units. It is one of the most widely used standards among the health care software globally. It is designed such that it is supportive of the patient care system as well as across departmental data transfer in a single or across multiple medical units.
Versions in use
HL7 Messaging standard version 2.7 is recommended by specialists while it is also known as Version 2.7, V2, V27 and V2.7. About 95% of US healthcare organisations and more than 35 countries in the world use V2.x.
Benefits – The several benefits of HL7 messaging can be summarized as below:
- The medical data exchange and sending across multiple medical units while maintaining the secrecy and privacy of the patient falls under this category.
- These constitute the basic tools and structure that would shape up the infrastructure and technology that should be considered while implementing HL7 standards and hence manage them.
- It supports almost every interface in the health care software that are used globally.
- It helps in reducing implementation costs as it comes with the guidelines for installing and implementing the software tool along with its in built features of reporting, billing, graphical representation etc.
So consult a specialist and get started with the HL7 messaging standard for your medical unit to serve patients better.
