Wes RishelKudos to Motorcycle Guy (aka Keith Boone) for Implementation Technology Specifications. It puts in context four separate efforts to simplify the XML representation of clinical information in HL7 Version 3 and CDA and to achieve a RESTful URL. I know I speak for a lot of people that have the greatest respect for the precision with which clinical data is represented in its V3 products but feel the transparency of the resulting XML is an important barrier to adoption.
One hopes these efforts include a program of diet and exercise that is effective in reducing OID metastasis.
Through Clayton Christiansen’s work on disruptive technology we learn that designing for the high end of the requirement space is far from being a bonus that tops off a good design effort. It introduces nearly gratuitous complexity that makes the product more complex and therefore automatically less accessible to the majority of the market. OIDs are a clear example of such high-end design.
I applaud my many friends in HL7 for taking this on and Keith for finding the time to participate and report on it in such a lucid manner.
Category: Healthcare Providers Interoperability Vertical Industries Tags: Health IT, Healthcare Interoperability, HL7
1 response so far ↓
1 Charles Jaffe January 22, 2010 at 2:19 pm
You have clearly articulated the issue of complexity as the HL7 community strives to acheive interoperability. Christiansen just said as much to a wider audience. Keith Boone has focused on some of the opportunities to make CDA even more accessible, even as its adoption grows. There is a more broadly based effort within HL7 to reduce complexity of the entire V3 family. One measure of the success of that effort may be the accelaration of adoption.