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.

Around the web

The nuclear imaging isotope shortage of molybdenum-99 may be over now that the sidelined reactor is restarting. ASNC's president says PET and new SPECT technologies helped cardiac imaging labs better weather the storm.

CMS has more than doubled the CCTA payment rate from $175 to $357.13. The move, expected to have a significant impact on the utilization of cardiac CT, received immediate praise from imaging specialists.

The newly cleared offering, AutoChamber, was designed with opportunistic screening in mind. It can evaluate many different kinds of CT images, including those originally gathered to screen patients for lung cancer. 

Trimed Popup
Trimed Popup