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

OMG and Health Level Seven International Recap Successful 2009
Groups will continue collaboration in 2010

Needham, MA and Ann Arbor, MI, USA - February 4, 2010 - OMG™ and Health Level Seven® (HL7) International have been collaborating for the past several years on the Healthcare Services Specification Project (HSSP), which is focused on producing industry healthcare service oriented architecture (SOA) standards.

2009 has been a banner year for HSSP, for the HL7 SOA Work Group, and for OMG's Healthcare Task Force. Examples of successes include:

• Entity Identification Service (EIS) and Retrieve Update Locate Service (RLUS) Technical specifications were published through OMG. These mark the first services to have completed the trip from HL7 to OMG.

• The finalization of the Entity Cross-reference Service Functional Model (IXS) Normative Ballot, the renaming of EIS and the marking of the first HSSP specification to complete the full life cycle from HL7 to OMG and back again, seeing it move from a draft standard for trial use (DSTU) to a Normative specification.

• The successful DSTU ballot of the Common Terminology Service, Release 2 (CTS2) Service Functional Model through HL7.

• The successful issuance of the OMG Common Terminology Services RFP through the Analysis and Design Task Force, the first HSSP specification to be issued as a platform specification within OMG.

• The successful ballot of the Healthcare and Community Services Provider Directory (HCSPD) as an HL7 Normative Specification, created in collaboration with the Patient Care Work Group.

• The release for ballot of the first of many Privacy Access and Security Services (PASS) DSTU ballots currently underway.

• The 2009 SOA in Healthcare Conference, the second instance of this event co-hosted between HL7 and OMG, which was well attended and very successful.

• The hosting of a "Terminology Services Information Day" educational event focused on CTS2 at the OMG Technical Meeting in December 2009.

• The EHR System Design Reference Model, an effort to align HITSP, HSSP, and SAEAF activities into a common reference, was published.

• An analysis effort to understand tooling and methodology requirements and opportunities between HL7 and OMG (e.g., Model Interchange Format, SoaML, etc.) is underway.

• The inception of a SOA Ontology workgroup/project at OMG.

• The OMG Decision Support Service technical specification completed adoption, based upon a joint submission against the RFP based on the HL7 Decision Support Service Functional Model

"The year in review of 2009 makes it clear that the collaboration between HL7 and OMG just gets better and better. HL7 has world-leading domain expertise in the medical space, while OMG has the finest infrastructure for modeling in many vertical markets. Working together we get the requirements right, and can define services that are broadly supported and interoperable across many tools and products," said Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., chairman and CEO, OMG. "The excellent working relationship between OMG and HL7 is not only mutually beneficial, it also benefits the patient by helping healthcare organizations to provide higher-quality, lower-cost healthcare through standards."

"Our collaboration with OMG has been both valuable and productive; HL7 has gained much from OMG's experience and understanding in a variety of areas. This relationship has provided HL7 with insight that we have used to accelerate our architecture and modeling development strategies, services functional models, and align some of our tooling efforts," said John Quinn, CTO, HL7 International. "Developments in the health information technology industry in general, and in health interoperability in particular, are accelerating at a rate far greater then we have ever seen in the past. OMG has been an invaluable partner on this journey. Likewise, HL7 is also grateful for the opportunity to contribute to OMG's development and expansion in the healthcare industry throughout the world."

For more information on the HSSP project, visit http://hssp.wikispaces.com/.

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About Health Level Seven (HL7) International
Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven International (www.HL7.org) is the global authority for healthcare Information interoperability and standards with affiliates established in more than 30 countries. HL7 is a non-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. HL7 collaborates with other standards developers and provider, payer, philanthropic and government agencies at the highest levels to ensure the development of comprehensive and reliable standards and successful interoperability efforts.

About OMG
OMG™ is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry standards consortium. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies and an even wider range of industries. 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 and Systems Modeling, and Business Process. OMG's middleware standards and profiles are based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA®) and support a wide variety of industries. For more information, visit www.omg.org. 

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Edited by Stephanie