Contact:
Stephanie Covert
Object Management Group
+1-843-737 0637
pr@omg.org 

Andrea Ribick
Health Level Seven
+1-734-677 7777
andrea@hl7.org 

Save the Date: SOA Consortium, OMG and HL7 Offer Workshop - SOA in Healthcare:
Realizing Quality of Care, Business Value, and Delivery on IT's Promise
Conference will be held April 15-17, 2008 in Chicago, IL, USA

Needham, MA, USA and Ann Arbor, MI, USA - January 8, 2007 - The SOA Consortium™, Object Management Group™ (OMG™), and Health Level Seven (HL7), today announced that the "SOA in Healthcare: Realizing Quality of Care, Business Value and Delivery on IT's Promise," workshop will be held April 15-17, 2008 at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare in Chicago, IL. Registration details may be found online at http://www.omg.org/hc-ws-std-pr.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) adoption is viewed as a key enabler for the 21st century enterprise due to increased opportunity for productivity and integration, and requires significant changes for both IT and business executives. The goal of the workshop is to raise the dialogue about SOA and its use in healthcare, especially as pertaining to healthcare quality.

The focus of the SOA in Healthcare conference is to convey real-world experiences to show what worked and did not work to help attendees benefit from lessons learned and real challenges faced in these implementations. The workshop intentionally integrates the themes of SOA and health quality, and is targeted primarily to a health-IT savvy audience. This event is focused on healthcare's challenges and SOA's role in meeting them.

A wide cross-section of the health industry will participate including healthcare providers, payers, public health organizations, vendors, and pharmaceutical companies. In addition, a select number of international invitees will be presenting. The sessions include presentations from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, Intermountain Health Care, Partners HealthCare, the [UK] National Health Service, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and the Blue-Cross Blue-Shield Association, among many others.

The workshop will be experientially focused, with speakers bringing their personal and organizational experiences to what will be a presentation and discussion-oriented forum. The event will host three tracks:

• An "Executive Summit" targeting key decision-makers, CxO's, and technical leads
• A "Business Track" focused on the business rationale behind SOA, and organizational change to support it
• A "Technical Track" addressing how to succeed with SOA in a health setting

Anyone with an interest in SOA in healthcare is invited to attend.

Registration & Information
This workshop is sponsored by Gold Sponsor BEA Systems, Inc. The early-bird registration discount is available until March 17, 2008. The registration cut-off for the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare is March 25, 2008. Hotel and registration information is available at http://www.omg.org/hc-ws-std-pr. Exhibit space is available; for more information contact Kevin Loughry at loughry@omg.org, +1-781-444 0404. Sponsorship opportunities are available; contact Ken Berk at kenberk@omg.org or +1-781-444 0404.

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About The SOA Consortium
The SOA Consortium is an advocacy group of end users, service providers and technology vendors committed to helping the Global 1000, major government agencies, and mid-market businesses successfully adopt Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by 2010. SOA Consortium founding enterprise members include Fortune 200 companies in Financial Services, Travel, Manufacturing, Retail and Telecommunications. Sponsors are BEA Systems, Inc., Cisco, IBM Corporation, SAP AG and Sparx Systems. Any organization may join the SOA Consortium. The SOA Consortium is managed by the Object Management Group.

For more information, please visit http://www.soa-consortium.org or email info@soa-consortium.org.

About Health Level Seven (HL7)
Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. (www.HL7.org) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards development 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 2,300 members represent approximately 500 corporate members, which include more than 90 percent of the information systems vendors serving healthcare.

About the Object Management Group
OMG is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies, including: Real-time, Embedded and Specialized Systems, Analysis & Design, Architecture-Driven Modernization and Middleware and an even wider range of industries, including: Business Modeling and Integration, C4I, Finance, Government, Healthcare, Legal Compliance, Life Sciences Research, Manufacturing Technology, Robotics, Software-Based Communications and Space.

OMG's modeling standards, including the Unified Modeling Language™ (UML®) and Model Driven Architecture® (MDA®), enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes, including IT Systems Modeling and Business Process Management. OMG's middleware standards and profiles are based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA®) and support a wide variety of industries.

More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org. OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA.

Note to editors: MDA, Model Driven Architecture, OMG Logo, XMI, UML, UML logo and CORBA are registered trademarks, and OMG, Object Management Group, SOA Consortium, MOF, MDA Logos, BPMN, OCRES, OCUP, OCEB and Unified Modeling Language are trademarks of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.