Abstract:
Health Level 7 (HL7) is the most popular global health care standard in operation today. It provides an
Enterprise Architecture (EA) for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health
information. Closely allied is the Services–Aware Interoperability Framework (SAIF) which is the
Interoperability Framework that operates on HL7. Using the Messaging, Document Exchange, and Services
paradigms, SAIF represents the careful blend of the best practices and concepts of many architectural
frameworks. Utilizing SAIF to churn out HL7-based EA specifications, ensure inter-enterprise and intraenterprise,
component-wise, cross-referenced, consistency, conformity, and compliance. This is true
irrespective of the interoperability paradigm used ,ie., Messages, Documents, or Services. However, these
technologies are not without their problems, and cynics. They have documented design and implementation
issues, both empirical and practical. The thrust of this paper is to present the “case technology” of HL7-
SAIF, both conceptual and engineered, highlighting the shortcomings, design issues, and practical
difficulties encountered during specifications design and development. Further, pertinent solutions devised in
this research to overcome these pressing issues are also articulated.