FHIR DSTU monitoring

Feedback on the FHIR DSTU can be submitted in a few different ways. It is the responsibility of each work group involved in FHIR development to have at least two active work group participants (more is welcome and encouraged) who monitor each of the submission mechanisms to be able to respond to questions relating to their content and to respond to requests for change.

Each work group should respond to comments associated with their content within a maximum of 5 business days, though shorter response times are better. That doesn't mean you have to have an answer, but can at least indicate that the comment has been noticed and that an answer is being worked on.

There are no firm guidelines about which of the mechanisms - Disqus or GForg tracker - to use, in general the tracker is used when there is some specific action that the creator believes should occur while Disqus is for general comments. However, it is up to the individual to decide which one to use, so workgroups need to monitor both.

Specification Discussion forum

Every page in the DSTU specification has a Disqus discussion forum widget at the bottom where anyone reading the specification can start a discussion - to raise a question, make a suggestion or provide feedback. Raising discussions can be done anonymously. However, if you sign up for an id, you get the option of subscribing to discussions of interest.

To sign up, click on the "Login" button. If you already have an account with Facebook, Twitter or Google, you can use one of those. If not, you can get a Disqus-specific login (select Disqus and then "Need an account")

Once you're logged in, you have the ability to subscribe to content. There are two alternatives. You can either subscribe to each page of interest individually or you can subscribe to all FHIR discussions in a single step. Subscribing individually is more work, but you'll then only receive information about resources of interest to your work group.

• To subscribe to all of FHIR, go to the following URL: https://disqus.com/home/#forums/fhirdstu and click on the "follow" button.
• To subscribe individually, go to the very bottom of each page associated with the resource of interest and click on the "subscribe" button. (Note, this means the main resource page, the Examples, Formal Definitions, Mappings and Profiles pages as well as the pages for each value set used by the resource - and eventually each profile and example used by the resource)

Gforge Tracker

In the red footer section of each page in the FHIR specification is a link titled "Propose a change" that takes the user to the gForge FHIR tracker for change requests. When completing a tracker item, please make sure to fill in the 'resource' entry, to ensure the appropriate WorkGroup is aware of the item

To monitor gForge trackers, there are two options.

• You can "monitor" the tracker, which means you'll be notified whenever FHIR tracker items are added are changed (whether they're relevant to your work group or not),
• You can set up a reminder to check the trackers regularly (at least once a week, e.g. before your WG's conference call) and review them manually.

In either case, you'll want to have privileges to maintain tracker items in gForge. If you don't already have a gForge id, you'll need to register for one. Additionally, you will need to be familiar with and agree to abide by the Intellectual Property rules as defined by the HL7 Governance and Operations Manual (GOM) (at the time of this writing, section 16 of the GOM). Once registered, send an email to lloyd@lmckenzie.com and

• Indicate that you have read and agree to abide by the Intellectual Property rules as defined by the GOM
• Request access to maintain tracker items. That will allow changing status, adding resolutions, etc.

To be notified of all FHIR items, go to http://gforge.hl7.org/gf/project/fhir/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=677 and click on "Monitor tracker" on the left-hand side.

To browse content, go to the tracker at the link above and then select "quick filter" to filter by your particular work group. Note that some new trackers might not have been triaged yet and thus may not have a work group specified.

Tracker Process

All incoming tracker items will be triaged by a member of the core team (status changed from "submitted" to "triaged"), ideally within a day or two of submission. This triage will include confirmation of the related resource(s) and page(s), identification of the URL, confirmation of the category of change and identification of the Work Group(s) involved in fixing it. If the change is identified as a typo (spelling, grammar, formatting, etc.), the change will automatically be approved. The same goes for corrections to publication tooling. All other changes are subject to review by a work group. (Publication/Tooling changes are subject to informal review by those who maintain the tooling)

When a triaged item has been assigned to a Work Group, they should vote to approve the change. Documentation of the desired change should be included in the item and its status should be updated to approved or rejected. Once the identified change has been made, the tracker can be updated to "applied". Only the core team will update "applied" items to "published".

List server

At least two Work Group members should be signed up for the FHIR list server. Instructions can be found here