Thursday afternoon the first official meeting of the Healthcare Standards Integration workgoup was convened at the HL7 working group meeting. A roomful of nearly 30 people met to review feedback on FHIR resources that had already been jointly developed by IHE and HL7.

This is a very significant event in the collaboration between HL7 and IHE. I've been (for the past 5 years or so), the HL7 appointed liaison to HL7, and had struggled to get the two organizations to coordinate their activities better. Others in HL7 and IHE had expressed similar frustrations. About 6 moths ago this came to a head, and IHE offered HL7 an opportunity to coordinate, and proposed some ways in which we could work together more closely.

The new work group is presently addressing some of its growing backlog of FHIR ballot comments, and will shortly begin working on developing their mission and charter.

I very much look forward to this new mechanism for collaboration between IHE and HL7, as it gives us a way to connect formally, rather than through the various informal mechanisms that we have tried in the past.

Already we have reduced the backlog significantly for the FHIR issues.

I'm sure you'll see more details on the official press releases coming from IHE and HL7, but those won't be coming out for a few days at the very least.