Towards Interoperable Healthcare Information Systems: The HL7 Conformance Profile Approach

Abstract

Typical healthcare organizations have many proprietary heterogeneous information systems that must exchange data reliably. Seamlessly sharing information among systems is complex. The widely adopted HL7 version 2 messaging standard has helped the process of systems integration. However, using the HL7 standard alone does not ensure system interoperability. The HL7 standard offers a wide range of options. Trading partners, without prior agreement, are not likely to implement options that are compatible. As a result, interoperability is stifled and organizations are left to employ their own ad hoc solutions. Conformance message profiles provide the solution to this problem. Message profiles define a standard template that provides a precise definition of the data exchanged between applications in a common format. Defining a set of message profiles for controlling message exchanges establishes a well defined communications interface among organizations and facilitates interoperability. We present a methodology based on message profiles for defining, implementing, and testing HL7 interfaces. We demonstrate how the use of message profiles improve system interoperability and present a collection of tools that we have developed to facilitate the use of message profiles.