The National E-Health Transition Authority yesterday released an advisory on a method of mapping Object Identifiers (OIDs) used in HL7 v3 systems to the federal Government's proposed 16-digit identifiers for individual patients, medical providers and healthcare organisations.
``To allow healthcare identifiers to work within the constraints of environments expecting an OID, such as HL7 v3 and (the upcoming) HL7 Clinical Document Architecture, we will provide a bi-directional arc using the (14-digit OID number) that sits under an Australian Government Healthcare arc,'' it says.
An example shows the OID number placed before the 16-digit number to create a 30-digit string.
But industry representatives say a switch to HL7 v3 represents an enormous change in technology, with very few local healthcare organisations contemplating the move.
NEHTA recognised HL7 v2 as the national standard for secure electronic health messaging in early 2007 due to its widespread use, but signalled the adoption of a service and document oriented approach, to be reflected in HL7 v3 and HL7 CDA, over the medium to long-term.
The two protocols are completely different say health informatics experts.
Experts say HL7 version 2 is `what-you-see-is-what-you-get', while version 3 is object-oriented. Architecturally, they are completely different and would require new hardware and software to implement.
A NEHTA spokeswoman said that while OIDs are mandatory in HL7 v3, they are supported in HL7 v2 as an optional data element.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Karen Dearne
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 22.02.2010
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