HL7 or Health Level 7 standards
HL7 is a set of standards, devised by the Health Level 7 organization, that are followed for designing healthcare software. This is created upon the seventh layer of the Open Systems Interconnection or OSI protocol. This sets the principles as to how software should communicate health information between various software applications. As digital healthcare transformation is receiving great response, and most facilities avail them to streamline healthcare solutions, it is a need of the hour to have a great system that dictates how information is shared to keep the process simple, at all times.
This blog discusses some of the HL7 standards followed by healthcare software companies and the benefits of following the same.
HL7 Primary Standards
These are a few standards that are commonly followed and implemented by healthcare software companies.
Version 2 messaging - This defines how a message is structured and what message can be exchanged between healthcare systems, set on the basis of segments, fields, and data types.
Version 3 messaging - This also defines the message's structure and context but in an object-oriented approach.
Clinical Document Architecture - This sets the standards on the structure and semantics to be followed for sharing clinical documents.
Continuity of Care Document - Defines the encoding, structure, and semantics for medical summaries exchange.
Structured Product Labelling - This sets standards on information published for prescribed, labeled medicines.
Clinical Context Object Workgroup - This sets norms for real-time synchronization of applications at the user interface level.
Other Standards of HL7
A few more standards that keep information exchange streamlined are as follows
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) - defines a better web-based suite of API, to ensure secure and seamless information exchange. This sets higher standards than version 2 and version 3.
Services Aware Interoperability Framework (SAIF) - This framework defines the specifications for the interoperability of services, messages, and clinical document architecture. This framework provides great consistency and conformity among different digital healthcare solutions.
Arden Syntax - The markup language followed for providing medical knowledge, used primarily for Clinical Decision Support System. Assists in making decisions regarding alerts, diagnosis, and interpretations. Set to provide a single clear note on the decision to be made under various situations.
Minimum Lower Layer Protocol - sets the transportation layer for HL7 messaging.
Benefits of following the HL7 rules
Digital healthcare plays a great role in day-to-day healthcare solutions, provided by health tech companies. It is essential to have certain standards that are easy to follow and guide through the development and usage accomplished at healthcare software companies. HL7 is one such standard and here are a few benefits of following the same
●Data Uniformity - This standard focuses on data transmission across platforms or frameworks and ensures that there is uniformity in the data transmitted so that there are no variations in the medical information that is shared.
●Effective Interoperability - The data transmitted is highly interoperable and no manual intervention is required.
●Improved Patient Care - With a perfect system to handle patient information and records, comes a great solution for extensive support to patient care. This also sets the rules for data transmission between the recent trending wearable healthcare devices, making healthcare solutions more effective.
●Cost-effective methods - Uniform standards imply less cost and reduced time, with great data accuracy.
Healthcare Software Companies are on the path to attaining their mission to have a comprehensive solution for management at healthcare facilities, where information is the key. Utilizing software developed on HL7 standards helps in maintaining compliance with HIPAA, and also supports high data monotony across the transmitted entities.
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