Health Level Seven International (HL7)

HL7 cooperates with the public institutions, insurance companies and other organizations which are engaged in development of standards for achievement of the high level of the developed solutions and successful interaction of medical information systems. Having official accreditation of American National Standard Institute (ANSI) as the organization for development of standards, HL7 has permanent members in 57 countries of the world. 500 corporate members of HL7, among more than 2300 members of this organization, represent about 90% of producers of information systems for health care. HL7 branches exist in 36 countries.

HL7, Health Level 7 ("The seventh level") is the standard of exchange, management and integration of electronic medical information. "The seventh level" — analogy to the highest level of communication model of open systems (OSI). The standard is developed by the powerful profitless voluntary organization Health Level Seven, Inc. created in 1987 in the USA which is engaged in development, development, implementation and accumulation of medical knowledge.

HL7 develops the international and national standards for effective exchange, transfer and sharing of electronic medical data. Informatization of health care led to digitization of medical records and creation of a large number of the medical information systems (MIS) which aggregate and store medical information on patients. However quite often integration of internal information systems of clinics is not adjusted owing to what transfer of medical information between the medical organizations is complicated. As a result when moving patients on a health care ecosystem their data become unavailable to attending physicians.

Experts of HL7 unify formats of storage and data transmission and create uniform terminology which is applied in all internal IT systems of medical institutions. Reduction to the uniform standard of the medical data arriving from the different organizations will allow to reduce terms of delivery of health care and diagnostics and also to optimize expenses on treatment – to patients it is not necessary to undergo again in each new clinic diagnostic procedures.

In the long term standardization of exchange of electronic medical documents and messages will help to improve work with cards of patients and also to completely adjust maintaining the electronic clinical record of patients who move between different stationary and out-patient organizations.

Russian branch HL7

The Russian branch HL7 is organized in 2009 based on the Russian national research medical university of N.I. Pirogov. The main activities of branch are transfer, adaptation, development and deployment of HL7 standards in the different fields of health care, training of doctors, IT specialists and students in the basic concepts of HL7 and creation of national standards in the field of medical information technologies.

Adequate and qualitative translation of the text of HL7 standard of version 2.3.1 into Russian executed by Ivan Vladimirovich Yemelin became important result of work of national branch.

The complete description of the standard, including basic requirements, exchange protocols by medical documents, types and qualifiers of data, the description of requests on information exchange and many other things is presented in this volume document from 891 pages. Key feature of this event is that for the first time in Russia adequate full translation of the international document, but not short structure declaration is made, such as it is made with GOST P ISO 12052-2009 which is the summary of the international standard DICOM. Now developers of different solutions in the field of health care have at the order the ready Russified document with the official status that significantly promotes its public awareness and support by the increasing number of the companies.

This event is long-awaited the industry since HL7 standard is given noticeable preference at discussion of questions of compatibility and interoperability between the modern medical information systems (MIS). In a number of regulating documents and in many regional HL7 projects it is mentioned as the obligatory standard for support. For example, in[1]the document "Requirements to MIS Contributed to Fund of Algorithms and Programs of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, Applied in the State Information System of the Personified Accounting in Health Care of the Russian Federation" there is a requirement to MIS about existence "the integration automation equipment of interaction of MIS with other systems implemented in the medical organization on the basis of service-oriented architecture according to HL7 specification …".

The Russian branch HL7 was created in the summer of 2009 at the initiative of the staff of the Russian state medical university with assistance of a number of government institutions, developer firms of medical information systems, medical insurance companies and treatment and prevention facilities.

Members of the Russian branch HL7 are the leading domestic developers of medical information systems: "Medical information technologies", "End-to-end medical information systems", "Programs and complexes", Interin Technologies, "Electronic medicine", 1C, "Radar station Patent", SofTrust, AIT-HOLDING, "Corporate information routines" and Bregis. The manager of department of medical cybernetics and information science of the Russian national research medical university of N.I. Pirogov, MD, professor, Tatyana Vasilyevna Zarubina directs work of branch. The main activity of the Russian Branch HL7 is development and deployment of HL7 standards in the different fields of applied medicine and a health care system.

In April, 2014 the LANIT company received the status of the permanent member of the Supervisory board in the Russian branch of the international non-profit organization on standardization of exchange, management and integration of electronic medical information of Health Level Seven International (HL7). Membership will allow the company to participate in development and adaptation to national conditions of basic HL7 standards, implementing them in the different fields of applied medicine and a health care system. In December, 2014 the Netrika company received the status of the permanent member of the Russian Branch HL7

For the last 40 years in the world a large number of various standards of electronic medicine is developed. At the same time HL7 standard is given noticeable preference at discussion of questions of compatibility and interoperability between the modern medical information systems (MIS). This standard provides interaction of computer applications in health facilities, exchange of external data. It formalizes interfaces between the different systems communicating about the patient, including data of analyses, appointments results of treatment, payment and so forth HL7 is widespread and conventional in the USA, Austria, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Israel, Canada, Japan, etc. According to the concept of informatization of health care of the Russian Federation till 2020, the international standard of data exchange of HL7 is selected from Russia as establishing and will be included in structure of GOST of the Informatization of Health series.