HL7International

HL7 International is a non-profit, standards-developing organization dedicated to improving the usability, completeness, and consistency of electronic health information. They create and maintain standards for the exchange, integration, and sharing of electronic health information. These standards are crucial for enabling different healthcare information systems to communicate with each other. The organization's name, HL7, originally stood for Health Level Seven, referencing the seventh layer of the OSI networking model, which deals with presentation and application-level communication. However, the organization now simply uses HL7 International.

Their most widely known standard is HL7 v2, a messaging standard used extensively in healthcare settings worldwide for exchanging clinical and administrative data. HL7 also develops newer standards such as HL7 FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), which is a more modern, API-based standard designed for easier implementation and greater flexibility in data exchange, particularly for web and mobile applications. FHIR aims to address the limitations of older standards and facilitate innovation in healthcare IT. HL7 standards are developed through a collaborative process involving healthcare providers, vendors, government agencies, and other stakeholders.