HL7NZ is the New Zealand Affiliate of Health Level Seven International (HL7®), the global developer of standards for the interoperability of health information technology with members in over 55 countries.

HL7NZ is a ‘Not for Profit’ incorporated society focused on current and emerging HL7® standards, with strong relationships to all other related healthcare IT standards used in New Zealand.

Chairman’s Xmas Message 

Christmas is almost here! As your newly elected HL7NZ Board Chair, I’ve been doing more than my usual share of reflecting on the year just wrapping up and the one about to begin. Clearly, we live in fast-moving times for health information standards development and implementation. HL7 FHIR is really taking off as the new lingua franca for sharing clinical, financial, and administrative data around the sector. Its importance has been recognised by many governments including our own, by vendors large and small, and by the thousands of implementers who contribute to the standard’s ongoing development. And FHIR isn’t even done yet! Version 5 is in the balloting process, and it will be a few more years before we see Version 6. All going well, I think we can expect FHIR Version 6 to really be ‘done’.
 
I got to attend the HL7 International Working Group meeting in Baltimore last September. I saw an organisation revitalised by the return to in-person meetings, the election of a new slate of directors bringing fresh ideas, and the growing importance of FHIR Accelerators, where like-minded stakeholders work together (and provide the necessary funding) to solve real-world problems using FHIR. Importantly for us in NZ, HL7 International has expanded its Board to create new seats for non-US members. This will help ensure that the group’s mission and our needs as Affiliates don’t get lost behind the sheer size of the US contingent.

To read more: go to the news post “Charman’s Xmas Message”

2022 HL7 New Zealand Annual General Meeting

The 2022 HL7 New Zealand Annual General Meeting was held on Thursday 17^thNovember at 3:00pm virtually via ZOOM.  Six members of the previous board were re-elected along with new members Ryl Jensen (Digital Health Association) and Chris Royle (Dedalus).

The outgoing Board Members – who voluntarily stepped down after notable contributions – were Linda McKay (Secretary), Anna Marie Scroggins and Gordon Inkson. Linda, who has also been our super-efficient administrator for the past 20 years, will be assisting her replacement(s) for a while before enjoying a well-earned retirement.

The Chairman’s and Treasurer’s Annual Reports, presented to the Meeting, can be found in the minutes

At the first meeting of the new Board, held directly afterwards, the following officers were unanimously elected for two-year terms up to November 2024: John Carter (Chair) and Peter Jordan (Secretary).  Peter Sergent (Vice Chair) and David Moorhouse (Treasurer) will continue in their roles until November 2023, having been elected to serve two-year terms in November 2021.

NZ Work Group News

We have just published the second version of the HL7 FHIR NZ Base Implementation Guide. This is the result of many months of diligent work by our HL7NZ FHIR® Implementation Work Group, with broad sector representation, and passed the required Membership Ballot, held last month, with flying colours. 

This Guide contains the base FHIR implementation rules for New Zealand (Extensions, Profiles Identifiers, and Terminologies). It is an ‘abstract’ artefact from which all other FHIR Implementation Guides in New Zealand may be derived, and we hope that it will continue to be a valuable resource for the local FHIR community.

We would also like to extend our gratitude to our members at Spark Health for kindly hosting the Guide.

HL7 International Courses to learn FHIR

Congratulations to our Matt de Haan, Senior Developer at HL7NZ Member Webtools, for recently completing the six-week FHIR Intermediate Course. This course is designed for those already familiar with FHIR and want to dive deeper, building their knowledge of what is required to use the standard for real world projects. Matt describes his overall views of the course in a Webtools Blog Entry. We encourage anyone who wishes to learn more about FHIR to consider taking one of the HL7 International Courses. Further details can be found here. HL7 New Zealand Members receive generous discounts on all of these courses.

Winter 2022 Update

In our last update, we provided a basic outline of the agreed release plan for the next two major versions of HL7 FHIR. We can now announce that a new revision of the current R4 version (R4B) has been published and is now the current version of the Standard available at http://hl7.org/fhir. A full explanation of R4B and the changes from R4 can be viewed here.

April 2022 Update 

In our last update, we invited feedback on HL7 International’s roadmap for FHIR and are now able to provide a basic outline of the agreed release plan:

• R5 – estimated publication in Q1 2023 – will be a ‘Trial Use’ version with no new normative content
• R6 – estimated publication in Q1 2026 – will be a major release with additional normative content

This effectively means that all new and changed content in R5 will be potentially subject to change, however all the existing normative content in R4 remains as such. Our expectation is that New Zealand will continue to use R4 for the foreseeable future, but we will provide help to any members wishing to add new elements, to existing resources, by way of extensions.

HL7® FHIR® NZ Base Implementation Guide Published

We have just published the first version of the HL7 FHIR NZ Base Implementation Guide. This is the result of many months of diligent work by our HL7NZ FHIR® Implementation Work Group, with broad sector representation, and passed the required Membership Ballot, held last month, with flying colours. This Guide contains the base FHIR implementation rules for New Zealand (exclusively extensions, identifiers, and terminologies in this version). It is an ‘abstract’ artefact from which all other FHIR Implementation Guides in New Zealand may be derived, and we hope that it will be a valuable resource for the local FHIR community.
 
As it is a ‘living’ artefact, work on the next version will commence later this month, and the Work Group will continue to hold regular, one-hour meetings on Fridays at 12:00pm. All interested parties are welcome to attend these meetings – further details are available on our Web Site.

October 2021 News

We are delighted to announce that an updated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Health Information Standards Organisation (HISO) was signed on 1^st October 2021. The MoU exists to recognise the respective roles of both organisations and the ways in which they can work together to use standards for the good of interoperability in the New Zealand health and disability system, and to play our part in the international standards community,
 
Congratulations to HL7 New Zealand Chair Peter Jordan for being re-elected as an Affiliate Director on the HL7 International Board for a further two-year term. Peter has also been elected, as an Affiliate Representative, to the recently formed HL7 International Terminology Services Management Group.

Winter 2021 Update

The past few months have been a busy period in the world of HL7 Standards Development. HL7 International recently held its May Working Group Meeting  and 27^th FHIR Connectathon. These events were attended by a combined total of over 1,000 worldwide participants but, due to COVID-19, the location was, once again, the virtual Whova platform.

Two new versions of the FHIR Standard have gone to ballot – R4B  (a sub-version of R4 containing new content and non-breaking changes) and the first draft of R5. While we expect that R4B will be adopted in New Zealand fairly swiftly, the final version of R5 is unlikely to be published until well into 2022 and its implementation will require broad consensus among the local community.

Further updates on HL7 International activity can be found in the May 2021 Edition of HL7 International News and the HL7 International Annual Report. The later focuses on Re-Envisioning HL7 – an initiative designed to ensure that the organisation remains focused, agile, globally-relevant, community-oriented and sustainable.

Locally, the HL7NZ FHIR® Implementation Work Group continues to work on the Base NZ FHIR Implementation Guide. This Group holds fortnightly, one-hour meetings on Fridays at 12:00pm with the aim of balloting and publishing a first version by the end of Q3 this year. All interested parties are welcome to attend these meetings – further details are available here. With the allocation of funding to the National Health Information Platform (nHIP/HIRA) in the recent budget, this work will produce a valuable resource for that project.

This month, we are also planning to resume our series of one-hour lunchtime webinars on topics relating to the implementation of FHIR® with a presentation from Medtech Global on their FHIR Platform ALEX. Further details will be available shortly.

Autumn 2021 Update

The Board of HL7 New Zealand (HL7NZ) recently held its annual face-to-face meeting at the offices of the Clanwilliam Group in Auckland to determine our main areas of focus for the coming year. Agreed-upon goals are to produce a Base FHIR Implementation Guide for New Zealand, further FHIR-related education and grow our community of members and partners.

The HL7NZ FHIR Implementation Work Group held its first meeting of the year on February 19th to re-commence work on the Base Implementation Guide. The Group will now hold fortnightly, one-hour meetings via ZOOM on Fridays at 12:00pm with the aim of balloting and publishing the first version by the end of Q3 this year. All interested parties are welcome to attend these meetings – further details are available here.

Christmas Message from HL7NZ

At the end of what might best be described as a challenging year for everyone, I sense that most of us are now looking forward to the upcoming break with a greater sense of relief than ever! Fortunately, thanks to world-class governance and our advantages of location and size, New Zealand is in a better position than almost any other country to enjoy the holiday season.
 
For this HL7 Affiliate, the year has concluded on an optimistic and positive note.  Our Membership continues to grow as more and more organisations, in all parts of the Sector, begin to implement HL7® FHIR® R4; following the clear direction provided by the Ministry of Health and initiatives from key members of the application supplier market. Together, we have the basis of a community that can provide a conformant and consistent implementation of FHIR that will facilitate interoperable information exchange as a means of improving healthcare outcomes.
 
Naturally, we have missed meeting our members in person, but virtual communication platforms have enabled us to maintain regular contacts with the local community. Internationally, this has been far more of a challenge: for more about this, and a longer account of 2020 – as viewed by HL7 New Zealand – I refer you to my recent Chairman’s Report to the HL7 NZ AGM.
 
Looking forward to the New Year, we are planning to resume our series of monthly, ‘NZ on FHIR Webinars’ in February and are seeking suggestions for topics. In particular, we invite those who are developing FHIR APIs to present their work to our Membership as a whole. We also encourage local implementers to participate in the worldwide FHIR community on Zulip which includes a stream dedicated to New Zealand.
 
Finally, I would like to extend sincere thanks to all our members and other industry partners for their support and engagement in the past year and I hope that you and your families enjoy a well-earned Christmas and New Year break within the relatively safe confines of beautiful Aotearoa New Zealand.

Peter Jordan, Chairman HL7 New Zealand

HL7 New Zealand – Annual General Meeting 2020 Report

The 2020 Annual General Meeting was held on Thursday 26th November at 3:00pm at the offices of the Clanwilliam Group in Auckland.  Eight members of the previous Board Members were re-elected along with Derek Buchanan, Michael Hosking, Anna-Marie Scroggins (Health Alliance) and Matt Valentine. The outgoing Board Members – who all voluntarily stepped down after huge contributions – were Karen Blake (Health Alliance), Martin Entwistle, David Fallas and David Hay (Chair Emeritus).

The Chairman’s Annual Report, presented to the Meeting, can be found here.

At the first meeting of the new Board, held directly afterwards, the following officers were unanimously elected for two-year terms: Peter Jordan (Chair) and Linda McKay (Secretary). Peter Sergent (Vice Chair) and David Moorhouse (Treasurer) will continue to serve in their current positions having been elected for two-year terms in November 2019.

HL7 New Zealand Signs MoU With HISO

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Health Information Standards Organisation (HISO) and HL7 New Zealand (HL7NZ) was signed on 5^th November 2020. The MoU exists to recognise the respective roles of both organisations and the ways in which they can work together to use standards for the good of interoperability in the New Zealand health and disability system, and to play our part in the international standards community.

HL7NZ Webinar – HL7® FHIR® – Foundation Topics for Non-Developers

Many thanks to those of you who attended this Webinar on July 14^th. We hope that you found it to be useful; certainly, we have received some positive feedback from participants.  For those wishing to explore links in the presented material, or who were unable to attend the presentation can be viewed here.

This was the first in a series of Webinars that we are planning to present around HL7 FHIR Implementation in New Zealand, so please look out for related emails in the coming weeks. The next session will probably focus on extensions to FHIR for local use; however, we would welcome any suggestions from Members as to any future topics that they would like us to cover and, in general, as to other ways in which the FHIR Community in New Zealand might collaborate.

HL7 New Zealand Executive Board

HL7 NZ mid-year seminar 2020 – Via WEBINAR

Many thanks to everyone who attended this Webinar on April 28^th, we hope that you found it an informative and enjoyable event.

All the presentations are now available for you to download and view at your leisure. The last two hours of the event can also be viewed here.

We are hoping to offer further Webinars in the coming months and would be delighted to hear suggestions as to the topics that you would like us to present.

HL7 Sydney 2020 International Conference 
& Working Grouping Meeting

Sunday – Friday, February 2-7, 2020 Sydney, Australia

Official event site: hl7.sydney

Report from our attendees was published on the HL7 WGM Reports page.

Our Chair Peter Jordan provided regular updates of this event. Read here.

Highlights from 2019

Chairman’s Christmas Message 2019

HL7NZ 25^th Anniversary Award was presented to Sysmex New Zealand as part of the Digital Health Week which took place at Claudelands Events Centre in Hamilton 19-22 November.  HL7 standards have been used in New Zealand for 25 years and throughout that period, Sysmex New Zealand has consistently implemented these standards in their products, evangelised HL7 standards in the broader New Zealand digital health community and offered continuous support for the local HL7 Affiliate – known, since 2004, as HL7 New Zealand.

HL7NZ held its Mid-Year Seminar on 19 June with an excellent attendance…read post seminar report here

International News… Announcements from the Atlanta WGM

HL7 New Zealand is pleased to announce that one of its founding members, Martin Entwistle, has been elected as a Fellow of HL7® International in recognition of his outstanding commitment and sustained contribution to HL7 International over a fifteen-year period. Martin was inducted into the HL7 Fellows Programme at September’s Working Group Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Also announced at this meeting was the result of recent elections held for the HL7 International Board of Directors and we’re delighted to report that HL7 New Zealand Chair, Peter Jordan was elected to the position of Affiliate Director. Peter will become the first New Zealander to be represented on this Board when he commences a two year term on January 1^st, 2020.

Further details of the Working Group Meeting, attended by a record number of 778 participants, can be found on the HL7NZ Web Site.

More Information on HL7NZ activities

Need more information or have questions you want answered, email us at admin@hl7.org.nz.

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