New award to recognise consistent support for HL7 standards in NZ

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In the words of the song, ‘spring is in the air’, and this is reflected in a number of exciting new developments in New Zealand’s digital health landscape.

New Zealand is celebrating 25 years of HL7 implementation and, to mark this occasion, HL7 New Zealand will be presenting an anniversary award at the HiNZ Conference 2019 in Hamilton for ‘Consistent support for HL7 standards in New Zealand’.

Candidates for this award are current organisational members of HL7 New Zealand who have used HL7 standards for a significant portion of the past 25 years.

We’ve also recently seen the recent publication of two documents of major significance for the implementation of our standards: the Ministry of Health’s Digital, data and technology services minimum requirements and the interim report of the New Zealand health and disability system review.

The latter, while not containing specific recommendations (these are to appear in a final report), contains strong messages about the need for interoperability standards as a critical enabler of digital health and the former clearly articulates the need for conformance to, and compliance with, those standards.

On a practical level, HL7NZ is fully supportive of the planned national Health Information Platform (nHIP) as a replacement for the single electronic health record project, and we view APIs built using HL7® FHIR® as key building blocks for this platform.

This will enable New Zealand to extend and adapt significant work already performed overseas and recently, as part of our strong relationship with HISO, we’ve been pleased to recommend the use of the international patient summary.

Following our successful mid-year seminar, we’ve also been busy developing a new website and we’re planning to update this with news and events on a regular basis.

We’re keenly anticipating New Zealand’s largest digital health event, Digital Health Week NZ – including HiNZ Conference 2019, and this will include a Standards Workshop featuring HL7® FHIR® and SNOMED CT®, on Tuesday 19 November.

Once again, HiNZ has kindly provided us with a booth (#93) in the conference exhibition hall and we encourage you all to pay us a visit there.

We’ll also be holding our AGM at 12:30pm in the Oakley room at Claudelands Events Centre on Wednesday 20 November – all members welcome.

Further details can be found in the conference programme. HL7NZ members are, once again, eligible for the special low affiliate member rate.

Source: HL7NZ, 10 September 2019

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