March 12, 2009
Comments on HIPAA and HL7
My correction about HIPAA and HL7 only began to scratch the surface.
Follow @infoworldApparently my correction about HIPAA and HL7 only began to scratch the surface. Several knowledgeable folks commented further or sent me e-mails.
First, the comments. John Quinn, HL7 CTO at Accenture, wrote:
HL7 Version 2.x (2.6 is the current version) is a standard for messages usually expressed in a proprietary byte-delimited syntax that looks a lot like X12.
Version 3.0 of HL7 can be expressed as messages, electronic documents or services. In all cases today the payload of the data exchange occurs in an XML syntax.
5010 is an X12 release and HL7's involvement is minimal in the approved set of HIPAA transactions.
HL7 will be significantly involved in a HIPAA transaction if (when) DHHS's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes the final rules for the HIPAA 275 Attachments transaction. In this transaction the attachment (e.g., lab result) is expressed as an HL7 Version 2 format which is consistent with the X12 envelope that encapsulates it.
Dave Shaver, Co-Chair Infrastructure and Messaging (InM) Committee, added:
Below is the URL to a whitepaper that provides an overview of V2 and V3. As John noted, V3 is a very generic standard that can (and is) mapped to XML as one of its forms. There are other ways to use HL7 V3.
http://www.corepointhealth.com/sites/default/files/whitepapers/hl7-history-v2-v3.pdf
Via e-mail, Pete Austin, PMP, Vice President, eCommerce Services at AXIOM Systems, Inc., said:
