Press Release

HL7 and OASIS Announce Joint Publication of Implementation Guide to Advance Emergency and Disaster Response

Enhances ER readiness and improves transition of care between first responders and hospitals

20 Sept 2016 -– Health Level Seven® International (HL7®) and OASIS, as a result of their cooperation agreement, today announced that they have published a joint implementation guide to bridge the electronic gap between emergency response and hospital communities, improving emergency patient coordination and ER readiness. The guide, HL7 Version 2.7.1 Implementation Guide: Message Transformations with OASIS Tracking of Emergency Patients (TEP), Release 1, is expected to improve accuracy and timeliness of data exchange between the emergency response community and hospitals, and between care facilities in everyday and disaster situations. It will also eliminate the need to re-enter or duplicate patient information for incoming emergency patients.

Public health response to emergencies relies on rapid and accurate data sharing. Tennessee Department of Health Deputy State Epidemiologist John Dunn said advancements in coordinating activities in a disaster situation could be beneficial.

“We’ve learned in previous responses and exercises that accurate information is critical but hard to acquire when disasters strike,” Dunn said. “We are always looking for improvements in sharing information to benefit our efforts.”

The implementation guide will improve data exchange by providing a mapping between the OASIS Emergency Data eXchange Language (EDXL) TEP 1.1 message, which enables the coordination of patient movement across the continuum of emergency medical care, and the HL7 Version 2 Admit Discharge Transfer (ADT) messaging standard used in the healthcare setting. It will allow hospitals and emergency departments to track incoming patients from emergency services in the field via existing HL7 conformant systems. When a patient must be transported from a healthcare facility by emergency services to another healthcare facility, such as day-to-day transfers or hospital evacuation, the bidirectional data exchange facilitated by the guide enhances continuity of care.

“Emergency medical services are always a team sport: even for one patient, first response and ambulance responders, air medical and extrication crews, and hospital medical directors are involved. In a disaster, the team scales proportionately. This standard enables a common operating picture among all of them, whether there is one patient or a hundred – an everyday event or a thankfully rare one,” said Kevin McGinnis, MPS, Paramedic, Communications Technology Advisor to five national EMS associations.

For more information about the implementation guide or to download it free of charge, please visit the HL7 website at: http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?product_id=439

The guide is also available via the OASIS website at:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/emergency/TEP-HL7v2-transforms/v1.0/TEP-HL7v2-transforms-v1.0.html

About Health Level Seven International (HL7)

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven International (www.HL7.org) is the global authority for healthcare information interoperability and standards with affiliates established in more than 30 countries. HL7 is a nonprofit, ANSI-accredited standards development organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7’s more than 1,600 members represent approximately 500 corporate members, which include more than 90 percent of the information systems vendors serving healthcare. HL7 collaborates with other standards developers and provider, payer, philanthropic and government agencies at the highest levels to ensure the development of comprehensive and reliable standards and successful interoperability efforts.

About OASIS
OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org) is a nonprofit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. OASIS promotes industry consensus and produces worldwide standards for cloud computing, security, business transactions, electronic publishing, emergency management, and other applications. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost, stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of free choice of technology. OASIS members broadly represent the marketplace of public and private sector technology leaders, users and influencers. The consortium has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 65 countries.

HL7 Media Contact: Andrea Ribick, HL7, +1 (734) 677-7777 or andrea@HL7.org

OASIS Media Contact: Carol Geyer, OASIS, +1 (941) 284-0403 or carol.geyer@oasis-open.org