HL7-SAIF in motion A pragmatic perspective

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.