Behavioral Health HL7 Interest Group

Behavioral Health HL7 Interest Group

Explanation of Demonstrated Need

The ability to collect, share, and use behavioral health information is essential to optimizing decision making at the point-of-care and creating an efficient learning health system (LHS). The behavioral health sector is currently undergoing an exponential increase in the use of health information technologies such as EHRs. In the absence of appropriate, accessible standards and clear guidance around how to use the standards, each vendor is creating proprietary information models using idiosyncratic value sets not mapped to coded terminologies. The large number of distinct EHR products, combined with the multitude of small-scale implementations, each housing data for a relatively small number of consumers, makes standardizing behavioral health information on the front end essential. The ability to use inherently fragmented behavioral health data to improve outcomes depends on the robust use of standard information models across EHRs.

The Behavioral Health Special Interest Group (BH-SIG) has formed with the explicit goal of providing these models. In addition to providing common information models, BH-SIG will work to define and develop a process for efficiently synchronizing the development of standards with the real-world, here-and-now needs of providers, provider organizations, and HER vendors. The workgroup seeks to make the implementation and evaluation of the standards as much a part of our work as the development of the standards themselves.