Peer review

A peer review is a formal review process used by many HL7 committees to perform quality assurance on artifacts. It involves up to 7 steps:

1. An artifact is produced to a level that is deemed to be "as complete as possible without review"
2. Upon agreement from the respective committee the author of the artifact distributes the artifact, together with a peer review form and schedules a peer review meeting
3. Optionally, an interim Q&A meeting may be scheduled to assist reviewers in their review
4. Reviewers go through the artifact identifying issues and concerns, capturing each one as a distinct row in the peer review form
5. Reviewers submit their peer review forms, generally to the committee list server or perhaps to the committee wiki. Forms must be submitted by the submission deadline.
6. The author reviews the peer review forms, identifying proposed dispositions (accepted, rejected, question, partially accepted, etc.)
7. At the peer review call, the author leads the committee (and other reviewers) in a walkthrough of the review comments, confirming resolutions, answering questions, identifying rationale for rejections, etc.

The purpose of the peer review is to help encourage a more complete review without necessarily going through the rigor of a complete ballot process. The review can also cover "partial" or incomplete artifacts.