What’s New on the HL7 Agenda?.

Healthcare Evolves and HL7 Archiving Keeps Up

Technology changes at a rapid pace, and healthcare is certainly feeling that evolution. Healthcare providers strive to gain full insight into clinical operations, but are sometimes held back by proprietary processes that limit image sharing and access to HL7 transactions. What’s new on the HL7 and medical imaging agenda?

There was much to discuss at the HIMSS Annual Conference, which included topics related to HL7. One of which is the Argonaut Project, a collaboration that includes a variety of healthcare IT vendors and providers who want faster healthcare interoperability resources. Charles Jaffe, a CEO in the industry, updated professionals at the conference about what separates FHIR from other standards and how that impacts the healthcare community.

The Argonaut Project also works with electronic healthcare records providers to help increase the speed at which progress is being made. For example, rather than experiencing a three to five month development cycle, they’re focused on a maximum of three weeks for improvements and enhancements.

HL7, which is short for Health Level 7, refers to the standard for transferring administrative and clinical data between software applications. The goal is to make the process more simple to use and easier to implement when it comes to the exchange of medical data, be it medical images or coding data.

Archiving structured data, such as HL7, and gaining access to it as needed would seem simple with today’s connectivity infrastructure, but unfortunately, it’s not. It’s an issue that radiologists and others in the profession have complained about for some time, and it’s mostly due to proprietary processes that put up significant roadblocks. This is a major problem because the amount of data being generated compounds on a daily basis.

Even though HL7 is a format that has been established far and wide, transferring this data across proprietary architecture continues to be an issue, but there are solutions on the horizon.

HL7 data is required to be archived, which is a problem for some providers, especially the small, rural practices and clinics that are limited in terms of budget and personnel. What has emerged as a solution are offsite storage vendors who quickly and easily implement solutions for a low cost through cloud-based technology.

There are great efficiencies to be had through cloud vendors, and they bring with them excellent business continuity and disaster recovery protocols that help clients achieve a more efficient workflow and a nearly 100 percent uptime guarantee. Furthermore, some of the best vendors are promising great savings.

OffSite Image Management, Inc., is a company that serves a variety of clients, including critical access hospitals and rural providers. OffSite is a 360-degree diagnostic image solution that also manages HL7 data. Our team is ready to assist you in your archiving and access needs, just contact us today and we’ll discuss your options.