Came across this post and video about how HL7 works on Twitter by @HL7 and really enjoyed the simplicity of it. What’s interesting though is that HL7 doesn’t seem to be simple at all. Please know I’m not saying HL7 isn’t a good thing, because standardization can add to progression. Also, I’m a business guy and need to leave the details to our technologist, so not sure how much clout I would have even if I did take that stance 🙂 With that said, here is my super high level take of HL7.
HL7 is very broad. Our company (Pathagility) provides a SaaS platform to pathology labs and their healthcare partners (referring physicians, hospitals, etc.) including interfacing services between the LIS and EMR. What we’ve seen is of the healthcare provider systems that do produce/consume HL7 data, many do it in a very customized way. For this reason, our strategy is to accept data in almost any format and transform it to the needs of the consuming party. This approach is not always simple, but seems to be needed at this stage.
Are you seeing a similiar environment? Have you incorporated subsets of HL7 (i.e. ELINCS)? What approach are you taking?