HL7Standards

HL7Standards refers to a family of international healthcare data exchange standards developed by HL7 International to enable interoperability among clinical, administrative, and public health information systems. The standards support electronic messaging, document exchange, and API-based data sharing across care settings and jurisdictions.

The most widely used components are HL7 Version 2 (V2) messaging, HL7 Version 3 (V3) with its Reference Information Model, the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), and the modern HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). V2 is a text-based, delimited messaging standard known for broad adoption and extensibility. V3 is a formal, model-driven approach intended to improve consistency, but has seen slower uptake. CDA defines structured clinical documents, while FHIR provides modular resources and RESTful APIs suitable for modern health information exchanges and mobile apps.

HL7 standards are developed and maintained by HL7 International through collaborative working groups, public comment periods, and ballots. Implementation guides and conformance criteria, along with community-driven Connectathons, assist organizations in testing and validating interoperability.

Adoption of HL7Standards is widespread in hospitals, laboratories, electronic health record vendors, and public health agencies. While they enable substantial interoperability improvements, real-world deployment often involves handling version differences, local profiles, and mappings to other coding systems such as SNOMED CT or LOINC.