HL7 Terminology Authority Mission

Mission - Draft

Mission

Objective

The HL7 Terminology Authority provides a central resource for the interactions of HL7 with external terminology developers in order to support the use of externally maintained coded vocabulary terms used in HL7 information structures. It provides clear, documented guidelines on the selection and use of either HL7 defined or externally developed terminologies for use in HL7 value sets and the mechanisms for submission of needed content to external terminology developers.

Goal

The goal of the HL7 Terminology Authority Provide an organizational structure and set of processes that, in conjunction with the Vocabulary Work Group, allow all HL7 work groups to acquire terminology content needed to support their artifacts. The Authority operates under defined guidelines that determine the applicability and appropriateness of requested terminology that is to be submitted to external terminology developers. The Authority will provide a single source of contact with external terminology developers and manage the submissions to these organizations. Specific goals include:

• In conjunction with the Vocabulary Work group, evaluate vocabulary content change requests to external vocabulary developers.
• Evaluate the appropriateness of external terminologies to meet specified tedrminological goals set by HL7 work groups.
• Develop close working realtionships with external terminology SDOs in order to better support the mission of HL7

To achieve these goals, the Authority will work cooperatively with the Vocabulary Work group as well as all other groups that have an interest in coded vocabularies used in clinical computing. Some of the external terminology developers that the Authority will seek to work closely with include: IHTSDO, LOINC, RxNorm, ISO, etc.

===Date of Last Revision July 24, 2012