Festive greetings from HL7 New Zealand
Once again it is my pleasure to wish you the compliments of the season on behalf of HL7NZ
It has certainly been an exciting year for Healthcare interoperability both internationally and within New Zealand. When I wrote last year, I talked about how the new HL7 FHIR standard was showing great promise, and during this year it has matured swiftly. Currently in a ‘DSTU’ stage (Draft Standard for Trial Use), it has already been adopted by many organizations and countries world wide, with the most recent activity being that a number of the larger American PMS vendors are directly funding the development effort (Project Argonaut) – it’s hard to imagine a better show of confidence than that!
Here in New Zealand we have hosted a couple of seminars – the most recent being at the HINZ conference where we were privileged to have Josh Mandel – lead architect for the SMART project – talk to us. This is another ‘leading edge’ standard which is part of the FHIR effort, and keeps New Zealand at the forefront of these important new developments.
Next year we intend to follow on from the Application Showcase at the recent HINZ Workshop, by hosting more practically-focused events including a connectathon. I’d also like to call out an event being sponsored by the University of Auckland – the ‘HealthCare’ hackathon – which will see developers creating real applications to help solve health care issues. More details here
So.. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, trust that you have a Happy New Year, and look forward to an exciting 2015!
Dr David Hay
HL7NZ Chairman