New IT Standards Announced for Electronic Health Records
Baseline Magazine reports that Health Level Seven (HL7) released new standards for electronic health records (EHR). HL7 is an IT standards organization with broad international representation. The HL7 standard specifies functional requirements for EHR systems and is the first organization to gain approval from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), a key organization that coordinates the development and use of consensus standards in the U.S.
The federal government and many health advocacy groups support the use of EHRs to improve patient safety by enabling healthcare workers to have access to important health information. In addition to cost as a barrier to developing EHR systems, lack of a standardized system has been an issue because different EHR systems have been unable to communicate and exchange information. A key factor in the success of the new standards resulted from the merged standards of HL7 and ASTM International. The two organizations recently announced a merged standard for describing past medical histories and demographics for patients when discharged from health institutions.
The HL7 standards (.pdf) describe 1,000 conformance criteria across 130 functions, including medication history, problem lists, orders and clinical decision support. In addition, there is support for privacy and security. The standards also accommodate EHR systems with special uses including disaster preparedness, long-term care, behavioral health, pediatrics and clinical research.
Related coverage: EHRVA Publishes Second Version of Its Interoperability Roadmap.
February 27, 2007 Related topics: Quality, Safety, Errors, IT & software