HL7 introduced the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard in 2014 as a viable alternative to the HL7 V2 and V3 standards.
HL7 and its members provide a framework for electronic health information exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval. These guidelines specify how data is prepared and communicated from one party to another.
HL7 standards are the most widely used globally for medical care support and the management, delivery, and evaluation of health care.
What is an HL7 standard?
HL7 refers to “Health Level Seven” standards that help the development organization establish a next-generation interoperability standard. The use of HL7 maintains the gap between the growing amount of healthcare data and our ability to make it accessible, computable, and useable to improve outcomes. intelyConnect offers a no-code and low-code approach to healthcare data integration and interoperability,
HL7, a collection of international data-sharing standards popularized by Health Level Seven, a non-profit organization focused on healthcare interoperability, is probably familiar to everyone.
HL7 simplifies implementing interfaces and eliminates the requirement for specialized interfaces across clinical applications.
Why was HL7 developed?
The process of data sharing across healthcare systems was extremely complicated before creating HL7. Both the transmitting and receiving programs needed a lot of code to complete the data exchange procedure.
Because there were no common patient characteristics, these interfaces were expensive. As a result, in the 1980s, a typical hospital had a small number of clinical interfaces and a high cost per interface.
The primary purpose of HL7 is to reduce the expense of custom interface development by simplifying the creation of interfaces between medical care software applications and various manufacturers.
Why does healthcare need HL7 standards?
Most healthcare practitioners now employ a variety of software for billing, patient record management, and data updates, among other things.
The main issue is that software communication is difficult to establish, even though they frequently need to communicate. Also, when two healthcare practitioners need to communicate information, there will be some issues.
HL7 establishes standards and recommendations to assist software developers and healthcare professionals in consistently storing and moving data.
As a result, the apps may utilize the data without specific conversion tools. Simply said, HL7 facilitates data sharing, reducing the administrative load on providers while also increasing medical delivery.
Categories of HL7 standards:
- Primary Requirements – Primary standards are the most widely used system integration, interoperability, and compliance. Here you’ll find our most popular and in-demand standards.
- Healthcare and Organizational Categories – This section comprises clinical specializations and groups’ message and document standards. These standards are normally adopted after the organization’s primary standards have been established.
- Implementation Instructions – This section contains implementation instructions and support papers designed to follow a standard. All of the publications in this section are meant to supplement a parent standard.
- Rules and References – Technical requirements, programming structures, and recommendations for software development and standards. All of this is covered by HL7, which includes development, acceptance, market recognition, and usage.
What are the strength and weaknesses of HL7 standards?
Apart from all this information about HL7 standards, let’s cover the strength and weaknesses of HL7 standards.
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Strength of HL7 standards:
Hospitals, government healthcare institutions, software providers, laboratories, private clinics, pharmaceutical businesses, and other medical facilities employ HL7 standards. In addition, the following people are the most likely to utilize it:
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Clinical Interface Specialists:
These are the people who are in charge of transporting clinical data around. In addition, they provide tools for transferring information and clinical applications that require data to be sent across systems.
These users are in charge of transferring clinical data between different apps or healthcare providers.
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Government Healthcare Organizations:
This category includes those who want to share information across several aspects or in the future. Furthermore, these users frequently wish to transport clinical data to a location not covered by current interfaces.
They have the flexibility to accept or require a communications standard.
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Clinical informaticists are experts in the field of medicine:
Individuals who work in the field of health informatics fall under this category. Health informatics is the study of why people seek medical help and how clinical data is generated.
Furthermore, these users attempt to adopt or create a clinical ontology—a multi-leveled design of healthcare information and the workflow.
Weakness of HL7 standards:
That is how HL7 standards are referred to as “non-standard.” As a result, to keep the standards flexible, they are applied and understood differently in different healthcare organizations.
However, each iteration of the HL7 standards has resulted in stronger standards, recognizing the necessity for more rigid norms to enhance uniformity across businesses.
It can also use APIs to assist in the resolution of these issues.
- The necessity for tougher regulations as defined by HL7 generated updated versions. As a result, there was greater consistency among organizations.
- Non-standards are sometimes referred to as HL7 standards, regardless of their recognition and use worldwide. Unfortunately, this means that different healthcare systems interpret and apply them differently.
- Profiles are created to make HL7 standards more readable and predictable. In addition, other devices and software can interface with EHRs.
How do you choose the best HL7 standard for improved patient care?
STEP 1: The first and most important step in determining if HL7 FHIR or other healthcare interoperability standards give the best path to achieving interoperability goals is to establish the intended outcome.
Cross-functional collaboration requires identifying important stakeholders—those who stand to gain the most—and precise facts about their needs and objectives.
Then take a step back and consider how those special requirements fit into the overall business and care environment.
STEP 2: The next step is to devise a strategy for achieving those goals and priorities. “What are the most critical strategies to improve patient care while increasing profitability?” for example.
After the objectives have been established, several considerations must be made to see if the FHIR is a suitable fit for the project’s aims and outcomes.
Conclusion:
HL7 standards provide a cost-effective approach to improving interoperability and healthcare delivery for healthcare organizations. Provide reliable data to healthcare providers to streamline care coordination.
intelyConnect helps you improve your healthcare approaches and other functionalities for better outcomes.
