HTC Tools Roadmap

Introduction

The HL7 Tooling Collaborative has been established with resource contributions from key HL7 stakeholders, to deliver significant benefits within 1 year of the project's initiation. This collaboration will enhance and integrate current initiatives by various stakeholders. A business model and project organisation, as well as a high-level technical architecture for tools, are described in separate documents.

Tools 'vision'

In general, the HL7 / NHS Collaborative Tools Project envisions tooling that:

1. produces machine-processable artefacts, spanning through all stages of the message design cycle (requirements, design, implementation and testing)
2. supports end-to-end automated testing of interoperability solutions
3. standardises the type and quality of the information conveyed between each stage and between communicating organisations
4. produces coherent, traceable and versioned concepts from analysis to implementation
5. facilitates direct involvement / feedback in international standards and tools development, ensuring ongoing alignment of implementation specifications with industry standards, including HL7 V3
6. reduces message development time, allowing the automatic translation of message designs to supplier-specific formats
7. facilitates consistent workflows and project management / oversight
8. provides a framework for publishing documentation about the artefacts generated throughout the process.

A potential summary view of tools required to accomplish the vision is provided in Figure 1. The flow indicated with arrows represents the progression through stages of the process. Feedback flows are not represented in this diagram.