HL7 publishes draft standard for PHR system functionality

Health Level Seven (HL7), a healthcare IT standards development organization, has published the HL7 Personal Health Record System Functional Model (PHR-S FM) as a draft standard for trial use.

The PHR-S FM defines the set of functions that may be present in PHR systems to create and manage an effective PHR. It also offers guidelines that facilitate health information exchange among different PHR systems and between PHR and EHR systems, according to HL7.

As a draft standard for trial use, the PHR-S FM allows the industry to work with a stable standard for up to two years, while it is being refined into an American National Standards institute-accredited version. As a result, consumers can begin requesting standards-based functionality when they select PHR systems for use, vendors can begin incorporating the model’s requirements into their products and organizations that certify PHR systems can begin evaluating the model’s conformance criteria for certification testing purposes.

The PHR-S FM can be applied to specific PHR models (stand-alone, web-based, provider-based, payor-based or employer-based models), HL7 said.

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