HL7 Mission

This is the latest draft of the HL7 Mission Statement.

• Please make changes as you see fit, be aware that radical/controversial changes can be undone by others as swiftly as they're made.
• The mission statement needs to be brief
• No jargon or techie words or details, please
• This version is probably (by its very nature on a Wiki) out of sync with version as discussed by the HL7 Board.
• If you run out of ideas, try Dilbert's Mission Statement Generator..

HL7 Mission Statement

HL7 creates practical standards for the exchange, management and integration of electronic healthcare information through the collaboration of an international volunteer community of healthcare subject matter experts and information specialists. HL7 promotes the use of such standards within and among healthcare organizations to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare delivery.

HL7’s Strategies

1. Develop standards that permit structured, encoded health care information of the type required to support patient care, to be exchanged between computer applications while preserving meaning.
2. Promote the use of HL7 standards world-wide by:
   1. Publicizing existing and emerging healthcare information standards and the business case for adopting such standards.
   2. Creating HL7 International Affiliate organizations, which participate in developing HL7 standards and which localize HL7 standards as required.
3. Educate the healthcare industry, policy makers, and the general public concerning the benefits of healthcare information standardization generally and HL7 standards specifically.
4. Stimulate, encourage and facilitate domain experts from healthcare industry stakeholder organizations to participate in HL7 to develop healthcare information standards in their area of expertise.
5. Collaborate with other standards development organizations and national and international sanctioning bodies (e.g. ANSI and ISO), in both the healthcare and information infrastructure domains to promote the use of supportive and compatible standards.
6. Collaborate with healthcare information technology users to ensure that HL7 standards meet real-world requirements, and that appropriate standards development efforts are initiated by HL7 to meet emergent requirements.