HL7 hosts its 17th Annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting

The Standard Developing Organization (SDO), HL7, held its 17th annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting Sept. 7-12 in Memphis, Tenn.

Scheduled three times a year, the meetings unite more than 30 HL7 technical committees and special interest groups, which are responsible for the content of the standards. This year's attendees participated in approximately 20 educational sessions that covered HL7 topics, such as version 2.x implementation, version 3, the clinical document archive and the clinical context management specification (CCOW). Each session also branched out to cover general interest industry topics, such as vocabulary terminology.

The keynote address was given by World Health Organization's (WHO) Dr. Bedirhan Ustun, team coordinator for classifications, assessment, surveys and terminology team. Addressing the importance of global health information systems, Ustun relayed how international classifications, standards and information networks contribute to the broad-based healthcare information systems that improve global evaluation of the burden of disease worldwide.

HL7 will hold its next working group meeting Jan. 18-23, 2004 in San Diego.

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