20120330 templates minutes

Minutes Template

Meeting Information

HL7 Templates Working Group Meeting Minutes Location: Cyberspace		Date: 2012-03-30 Time: 3:00pm U.S. Eastern
Facilitator	Mark Shafarman	Note taker(s)	Mark Shafarman
Attendee	Name	Affiliation
yes	Shafarman, Mark	Shafarman Consulting, Inc.
yes	Heitmann, Kai	HL7 Germany
yes	Stechishin, Andy
yes	Roberts, John
yes	Lynch, Cecil
Quorum Requirements Met: Yes

Minutes

Minutes/Conclusions Reached:

1. We continued discussion of the use of "parameterized templates" in the next Structured Documents ballot for eMeasures (QRDA). There was a strong preference to not misuse the OID extension for semantically meaningful data. Cecil will discuss this issue with the ARB. Kai also noted that it should be taken up with the ARB, since it is also a universal realm issue: i.e., this usage would be US-realm, but it would also have consequences for implementers in the EU. Mark offered to draft a paragraph describing this issue (still to do).
2. Cecil described work in Australia that supports local EMR and related systems ability to persist the documents that use specific templates. This is a conformance requirement to persist Australian PHR documents so that the system can use all of the data elements, and also so that changes in templates can be tracked and implemented by all systems receiving the various CDA documents using the changed templates the participating systems make use of a "package" which has all the information needed to use a given template. It contains the w3c schema, an implementation guide, an XML configuration file, and additional metadata (both in human and machine readable forms)
3. Kai asked if the Australian experience is mature enough to be shared. He noted that the DECOR project as a proof of concept has been used since 2008.
4. Both the DECOR and the Australian project include terminology experts as well as health information experts, and both involve clinicians at the initial specification level.
5. Further discussion centered on the experience gained in both projects. It was noted that the MIF (or MIF2) is not sufficient for implementable template definitions. The OWL language can support implementation, but it is too complex for the 'average' implementer. What is needed is a canonical format for a template's definition that is easily implementable.
6. next steps: i) compare the EU and the Australian experiences for both 'lessons learned' and one or more implementable templates ITS methodologies. ii) do same with the templates (and templates registry) metadata aspects of both projects.