phenomenalplace

The following showed up in my inbox this morning. In general, I think this is great policy advice, especially the section on Agency Responsibilities starting at the bottom of page 3. What I'd liked to emphasize is this statement found on the middle of page 2: To accomplish these objectives, the Federal Government, as directed by Congress, is taking a convening role to accelerate standards development, by working closely with domestic and international private sector standards organizations. I work closely with SDOs, and I know what it means to do so.  I cannot give the Federal Government high marks here, although I have to admit that they've gotten better over the last year.  If they mean to sustain the good work going on in the S&I Framework activities, they'll have to do better.   The S&I  contracts will end, and that means someone will have to maintain the outputs. I hope we won't have another situation like the one where HITSP wound up orphaning documen...

Rene Spronk had a great post on the HL7 Affiliate Life Cycle a few weeks back.  Yesterday Catherine Chronaki displayed a simple slide based on that model at the HL7 Working Group meeting.  While Rene talks about it from an HL7 Perspective, I think about it from a national perspective.  There are essentially five levels in Rene's model: Raising Awareness Creating Consensus Based Localization Paid Development Official Endorsement Standards Collaborative So far, only Canada is at level 5.  The US through Meaningful Use is sort of at level 4 for endorsement of HL7 standards, and the ONC S&I Framework is certainly a level 2 activity, if not officially acting as an HL7 Affiliate. The S&I Framework contracts (there are at least 10) will eventually end.  There are a lot of activities which have produced outputs that still need maintenance (e.g., the Clinical Element Data Dictionary).  One of the tasks for the S&I Framework is to establish a long term...