Health Level Seven, Object Management Group Begin Joint Healthcare Software Services Standardization Work; Combined Effort Leverages Strengths of Each Organization.

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- The IT specifications consortium Object Management Group (OMG) and Health Level Seven (HL7) are collaborating to build a set of standard healthcare-domain software components and services interface standards to promote open interoperability across health provider organizations and products. Conceived to support healthcare IT as part of national initiatives such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Health Information Infrastructure, the cooperative effort builds on the complementary strengths of the two organizations. The initial focus of the effort is to address the need for standards directly supportive of electronic health record interoperability and information exchange.

As set out in the project charter, the two organizations will jointly identify and prioritize candidate services for standardization. HL7 will elaborate the business functional needs, allocate functions to services, and provide information modeling and content. OMG will then develop these business domain requirements into specifications for software architecture and components using its foundation technologies - the Unified Modeling Language(TM) (UML(R)) and Model Driven Architecture(R) (MDA(R)). Strengthened by the support of numerous companies holding membership in both organizations, the cooperative effort is on track to produce its initial deliverables by the end of 2005.

Spearheaded by the MedicAlert(R) Foundation, Kaiser-Permanente, and the Veterans Health Administration, a growing list of companies and organizations have formally committed their support and resources in support of this initiative, which includes global interest and engagement. These organizations are:

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association 

Eclipse Foundation

Electronic Data Systems Incorporated (EDS) US Government Division

HL7 International Affiliate Organizations from Australia, Finland and New Zealand

IBM

Kaiser-Permanente

Mayo Laboratory for Biomedical Informatics

MedicAlert(R) Foundation

Ocean Informatics

PatientKeeper, Inc.

Universata

VHA Office of Information, Health Information Architecture Office

"The initial focus of the effort is to identify services that have well-defined boundaries, are reasonably scoped, and have broad utility and applicability to support the Electronic Health Record," said Ken Rubin, an enterprise architect with EDS who is co-chairing this initiative on behalf of the Veterans Health Administration. "We want to produce standards that are of business value and result in implementations and not shelfware. This is one of the benefits of the HL7-OMG collaboration."

"MedicAlert hopes that this effort will prompt the large healthcare IT vendors to commit to using UML-based standards, open-source code and Web services in their applications," said David Harrington, CTO of MedicAlert(R). "These standards will also allow existing Healthcare IT applications to be adapted for greater interoperability."

"Health Level Seven is committed to establishing standards that assist its members and the health industry at large to overcome technical barriers to health information system interoperability," said HL7 Board Chair Mark Shafarman. "This project is another example of that commitment. We will continue to explore new areas of focus and engage in collaborations with organizations such as OMG that provide solutions and capabilities complementary to ours and that extend the application of our standards beyond 'just-messaging' to technical paradigms such as service architectures."

"OMG is committed to rapidly providing standards, reflected in products available in commercial and open-source form, that provide interoperability, portability and software reuse in the healthcare IT market," said Dr. Richard Soley, OMG CEO." We are gratified that this strong partnership with HL7 is bearing fruit so rapidly. The needs of healthcare providers and ISV's and government organizations to build interoperable solutions are stronger than ever, and this joint freight train is roaring down the tracks faster than we could have imagined.

The project effort is already underway, and a joint project meeting between the two organizations is planned for April 5-6, 2005 in Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information, contact Nicole Glazen Rikkinen, OMG, VP of Business Development at [e-mail] or 781-444-0404.

About HL7

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. (http://www.HL7.org/) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing 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 2,000 members represent approximately 500 corporate members, including 90 percent of the largest information systems vendors serving healthcare. Recently, HL7 joined 12 other healthcare stakeholders in a collaborative response to the Request for Information (RFI) issued by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) to learn how widespread interoperability of health information technologies and health information exchange could be achieved through a National Health Information Network (NHIN). The Collaborative response can be viewed in its entirety at: http://www.hl7.org/Library/General/Collaborative_RFI_Responsefinal.pdf The HL7 additional response specific to Standards and Policies to Achieve Interoperability can be found at http://www.hl7.org/Library/General/HL7Q14-18_final.pdf.

HL7's endeavors are sponsored, in part, by the support of its benefactors: Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.; Capgemini; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Documentum; Eclipsys Corporation; Eli Lilly & Company; the Food and Drug Administration; GE Medical Systems; Guidant Corporation; HIMS Solutions, Inc.; IBM; IDX Systems Corporation; InterSystems Corporation; Kaiser Permanente; McKesson Provider Technologies; Microsoft Corporation; Misys Healthcare Systems; NHS National Programme for IT; NICTIZ National ICT Institute for Healthcare in The Netherlands; Oracle Corporation; Partners HealthCare System, Inc.; Pfizer, Inc.; Philips Medical Systems; Quest Diagnostics Inc.; Science Applications International Corporation; Siemens Medical Solutions Health Services; the U.S. Department of Defense; Military Health System; the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

HL7 International affiliates have also been established in 27 countries throughout the globe including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

About The OMG

With well-established standards covering software from design and development, through deployment and maintenance, and extending to evolution to future platforms, the Object Management Group (OMG) supports a full-lifecycle approach to enterprise integration which maximizes ROI, the key to successful IT. OMG's standards cover multiple operating systems, programming languages, middleware and networking infrastructures, and software development environments. OMG's Modeling standards, the basis for the MDA, include the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM). CORBA, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is OMG's standard open platform with hundreds of millions of deployments running today.

Headquartered in Needham, MA, USA, with a U.S. government representative in Washington, DC, and international marketing representatives in Japan, the UK, and Germany, the Object Management Group is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry specifications consortium. OMG member companies write, adopt, and maintain the organization's standards following a mature, open process. All current OMG specifications may be downloaded without charge from the organization's website, www.omg.org; the site also provides additional information about OMG and its activities. For information on joining the OMG, or questions not addressed on the website, please contact OMG headquarters by email at [e-mail], by phone at [phone], or by fax at [phone].

Note to editors: The OMG Object Management Group Logo(R), MDA(R), Model Driven Architecture(R), UML(R), CORBA(R), CORBA Academy(R), The Information Brokerage(R), XMI(R) and IIOP(R) are registered trademarks of the Object Management Group. OMG(TM), Object Management Group(TM), CORBA logos(TM), Model Driven Development(TM), MDD(TM), OMG Interface Definition Language (IDL)(TM), The Architecture of Choice for a Changing World(TM), CORBAservices(TM), CORBAfacilities(TM), CORBAmed(TM), CORBAnet(TM), Integrate 2004(TM), Middleware That's Everywhere(TM), Unified Modeling Language(TM), The UML Cube logo(TM), MOF(TM), CWM(TM), The CWM Logo(TM), Model Driven Architecture Logos(TM) and the XMI Logo(TM) are trademarks of the Object Management Group. All other products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.