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Contact:
Jonathan Himlin
Health Level Seven
734-677-7777
jhimlin@HL7.org
Dana Morris
Object Management Group
+1-781-444 0404 ext. 142
pr@omg.org
Health Level Seven, Object Management Group Begin
Joint Healthcare Software Services Standardization Work
Combined Effort Leverages Strengths of Each Organization
Needham, MA, USA – March 8, 2005 – The IT specifications consortium
Object Management Group (OMG) and Health Level Seven (HL7) are collaborating
to build a set of standard healthcare-domain software components and
services interface standards to promote open interoperability across health
provider organizations and products. Conceived to support healthcare IT as
part of national initiatives such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services’ National Health Information Infrastructure, the cooperative effort
builds on the complementary strengths of the two organizations. The initial
focus of the effort is to address the need for standards directly supportive
of electronic health record interoperability and information exchange.
As set out in the project charter, the two organizations will jointly
identify and prioritize candidate services for standardization. HL7 will
elaborate the business functional needs, allocate functions to services, and
provide information modeling and content. OMG will then develop these
business domain requirements into specifications for software architecture
and components using its foundation technologies – the Unified Modeling
Language™ (UML®) and Model Driven
Architecture® (MDA®). Strengthened by the support of numerous companies
holding membership in both organizations, the cooperative effort is on track
to produce its initial deliverables by the end of 2005.
Spearheaded by the MedicAlert® Foundation, Kaiser-Permanente, and the
Veterans Health Administration, a growing list of companies and
organizations have formally committed their support and resources in support
of this initiative, which includes global interest and engagement. These
organizations are:
Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association
Eclipse Foundation
Electronic Data Systems Incorporated (EDS) US Government Division
HL7 International Affiliate Organizations from Australia, Finland and New
Zealand
IBM
Kaiser-Permanente
Mayo Laboratory for Biomedical Informatics
MedicAlert® Foundation
Ocean Informatics
PatientKeeper, Inc.
Universata
VHA Office of Information, Health Information Architecture Office
“The initial focus of the effort is to identify services that have
well-defined boundaries, are reasonably scoped, and have broad utility and
applicability to support the Electronic Health Record,” said Ken Rubin, an
enterprise architect with EDS who is co-chairing this initiative on behalf
of the Veterans Health Administration. “We want to produce standards that
are of business value and result in implementations and not shelfware. This
is one of the benefits of the HL7-OMG collaboration.”
“MedicAlert hopes that this effort will prompt the large healthcare IT
vendors to commit to using UML-based standards, open-source code and Web
services in their applications,” said David Harrington, CTO of MedicAlert®.
“These standards will also allow existing Healthcare IT applications to be
adapted for greater interoperability.”
“Health Level Seven is committed to establishing standards that assist
its members and the health industry at large to overcome technical barriers
to health information system interoperability,” said HL7 Board Chair Mark
Shafarman. “This project is another example of that commitment. We will
continue to explore new areas of focus and engage in collaborations with
organizations such as OMG that provide solutions and capabilities
complementary to ours and that extend the application of our standards
beyond ’just-messaging’ to technical paradigms such as service
architectures.”
“OMG is committed to rapidly providing standards, reflected in products
available in commercial and open-source form, that provide interoperability,
portability and software reuse in the healthcare IT market,” said Dr.
Richard Soley, OMG CEO.“ We are gratified that this strong partnership with
HL7 is bearing fruit so rapidly. The needs of healthcare providers and ISV's
and government organizations to build interoperable solutions are stronger
than ever, and this joint freight train is roaring down the tracks faster
than we could have imagined.
The project effort is already underway, and a joint project meeting
between the two organizations is planned for April 5-6, 2005 in Salt Lake
City, Utah. For more information, contact Nicole Glazen Rikkinen, OMG, VP of
Business Development at nicole@omg.org or 781-444-0404.
About HL7
Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. (
http://www.HL7.org/ ) is a
not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated
to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the
exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health
information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and
evaluation of health services. HL7’s more than 2,000 members represent
approximately 500 corporate members, including 90 percent of the largest
information systems vendors serving healthcare. Recently, HL7 joined 12
other healthcare stakeholders in a collaborative response to the Request for
Information (RFI) issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for
Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) to learn how widespread
interoperability of health information technologies and health information
exchange could be achieved through a National Health Information Network (NHIN).
The Collaborative response can be viewed in its entirety at:
http://www.hl7.org/Library/General/Collaborative_RFI_Responsefinal.pdf. The
HL7 additional response specific to Standards and Policies to Achieve
Interoperability can be found at
http://www.hl7.org/Library/General/HL7Q14-18_final.pdf.
HL7's endeavors are sponsored, in part, by the support of its
benefactors: Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.; Capgemini; Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC); Documentum; Eclipsys Corporation; Eli Lilly &
Company; the Food and Drug Administration; GE Medical Systems; Guidant
Corporation; HIMS Solutions, Inc.; IBM; IDX Systems Corporation;
InterSystems Corporation; Kaiser Permanente; McKesson Provider Technologies;
Microsoft Corporation; Misys Healthcare Systems; NHS National Programme for
IT; NICTIZ National ICT Institute for Healthcare in The Netherlands; Oracle
Corporation; Partners HealthCare System, Inc.; Pfizer, Inc.; Philips Medical
Systems; Quest Diagnostics Inc.; Science Applications International
Corporation; Siemens Medical Solutions Health Services; the U.S. Department
of Defense; Military Health System; the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs;
and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.
HL7 International affiliates have also been established in 27 countries
throughout the globe including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China,
Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India,
Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, The Netherlands, New
Zealand, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
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About The OMG
With well-established standards covering software from design and
development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution
to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a
full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the
key to successful IT. OMG's standards cover multiple operating systems,
programming languages, middleware and networking infrastructures, and
software development environments. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for
the MDA, include the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Common Warehouse
Metamodel (CWM). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is
OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments
running today.
Headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with a U.S. government representative in
Washington, DC, and international marketing representatives in Japan, the
UK, and Germany, the Object Management Group is an international, open
membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. OMG
member companies write, adopt, and maintain the organization’s standards
following a mature, open process. All current OMG specifications may be
downloaded without charge from the organization’s website,
www.omg.org; the site also provides
additional information about OMG and its activities. For information on
joining the OMG, or questions not addressed on the website, please contact
OMG headquarters by email at info@omg.org,
by phone at +1-781-444 0404, or by fax at +1-781-444 0320.
Note to editors: The OMG Object Management Group Logo®,
MDA®, Model Driven Architecture®, UML®, CORBA®, CORBA Academy®, The
Information Brokerage®, XMI® and IIOP® are registered trademarks of the
Object Management Group. OMG™, Object Management Group™, CORBA logos™, Model
Driven Development™, MDD™, OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL)™, The
Architecture of Choice for a Changing World™, CORBAservices™,
CORBAfacilities™, CORBAmed™, CORBAnet™, Integrate 2004™, Middleware That's
Everywhere™, Unified Modeling Language™, The UML Cube logo™, MOF™, CWM™, The
CWM Logo™, Model Driven Architecture Logos™ and the XMI Logo™ are trademarks
of the Object Management Group. All other products or company names
mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks
of their respective owners.
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