International Mentoring Committee

HL7 International Mentoring Committee

HL7 Working Group Meeting, Cambridge, MA, USA

2013-09-22

(Cambridge A room)

Sunday Q4

Listserv:

Attending:

·  John RITTER; IMC co-chair; scribe;

·  Diego KAMINKER; IMC co-chair; ;

·  Rita SCICHILONE;

·  Allen HOBBS;

·  Julio CAJIGAS; ; Chair, HL7 Puerto Rico

·  Philip SCOTT;

·  Ticia GERBER; ; HL7, Director of Global Partnership and Policy

·  Eligio Becerra; ; Mexico

Invited:

·  Catherine CHRONAKI

·  Chuck JAFFE;

·  Grant WOOD

·  Sharon Chaplock; (HL7 Education director)

·  Walter SUAREZ

·  Fernando CAMPOS; ; Chair, HL7 Argentina

·  Marivan ABRAHAO; ; Chair, HL7 Brazil

·  Michael VAN CAMPEN

Follow-up (for those who could not attend the meeting), send minutes to:

·  Richard DIXON-HUGHES

·  Virginia RIEHL

·  Catherine CHRONAKI

·  Beatriz LEAO

·  Jon PAYNE

·  Ron PARKER

·  Gora DATTA;

·  John GACHAGO;

·  Mwenda GITONGA; ; Futures Group

·  (Juma) Ali KARISA; ; Futures Group

·  Donna MEDEIROS; ; Futures Group

·  Stacey BERLOW; ; Futures Group

·  Kai HEITMANN

·  Mr. Haythem NAKKAS; (Libya)

HL7 EU efforts:

The focus of the HL7 EU office will be on engaging the ehealth community in Europe with HL7

·  Improve HL7 presence and visibility in Europe

·  Manage European-level policy responses

·  Active collaboration of affiliates in Europe issues

·  Coordinate on of co-funded project in Europe.

·  European eHealth Policy: ehealth interoperability Framework

MOTIONS:

·  (None)

Materials:

·  "IMC minutes 20130505.doc"

Minutes:

1.  The minutes of the previous meeting (2013-05-05) were reviewed and accepted.

2.  The IMC recently presented an update to the Board of Directors and to the International Council as follows:

CENTRAL AMERICA

Diego Kaminker presented at the September 2013 "Combined Centro-American Health IT conference" in Honduras:

·  http://www.cumbreitsalud-centroamerica.com/Programa.htm#.UjHrNxZbCwY

At the conference meeting was held with healthcare representatives of five governmental organizations (MOH and Workers' Health Insurance HIT); they will try to create a Centro-American HL7 Affiliate. Interested countries are:

·  Honduras

·  El Salvador

·  Dominican Republic

·  Costa Rica

·  Nicaragua

·  Guatemala

·  Panama

Costa Rica is the most active and they have received the paper work to establish a local HL7 Affiliate. However, since the countries of Central America are small and the HIT market is currently small, the IMC believes that the best approach is via a regional "Centro-American HL7 Affiliate". The new coalition's first assigned task was to identify two students from each country who would receive the twelve (Spanish edition) HL7 eLearning Course scholarships offered by HL7 Argentina.

AFRICA

Various HL7 members have made inroads to Africa over the years, but creation of stable HL7 Affiliate organizations in Africa remains elusive. The International Mentoring Committee launched a “Healthcare IT Standards in Africa initiative” at the January 2012 HL7 Working Group Meeting to help develop awareness – and promote the adoption and use – of standards in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), specifically in Africa. The IMC is currently packaging the findings of that Initiative into business-related PowerPoints and Templates for use in Africa.

To promote Capacity-Building in Africa, the IMC is brainstorming an African Road Show, answering: "What are SDOs? What is HL7? What is an HL7 Affiliate? What is the IMC? What is a Standards Collaborative? Why standards are important? What is Capacity Building? What is the business case? How to Begin?”

LIBYA

After a good measure of participation at the IMC conference calls regarding heath I.T. approaches in Libya (focusing on the need for HIT standards) and a letter-of-invitation from HL7, a PhD student was not granted a VISA to attend the September 2013 HL7 WGM in Cambridge, USA (even though the student would self-fund the trip). Question: if Libyans are not able to attend HL7 future WGMs, how can the IMC best make the case for Libyan involvement in HIT standards-related organizations?

3.  Africa and Low-and-Middle-Income-Countries (LMIC) approaches:

·  Rather than attempt to launch an HL7 Affiliate in a certain country, it might be better to target benefactors and collaborate with them to introduce the need for standards. That is, since HL7 standards are one part of the collection of standards required for a successful HIT system, a collaboration of SDOs is needed. This approach is likely to require coordinated educational offerings in order to build the capacity of the local implementers.

·  ISO TC215 PHTF: (14639 parts A and B) maturity model per LMIC ehealth strategy; the framework details recommendations for access, adoption, and use of HIT standards. They have created the strategy, but they need to operationalize it (via funding).

·  JIC could be the vehicle for the African Road Show;

·  WHO recently approved an ehealth directive whereby each member country should pursue the establishment of a national ehealth strategy.

·  WHO's Director General was recently tasked to create regional centers that would support public health and the adoption of standards.

·  IMIA recently decided that its function would be to operationalize the PHTF's recommendations and WHO's recommendations.

·  It would also be good to develop a model that examines the risks and other factors (such as politics, corruption, piracy, governmental stability, and economics).

·  Certain countries (such as Tanzania, which has a successful program) are experiencing successes; these successes should be leveraged in neighboring countries.

·  WHO: "Global Observatory on eHealth" (assesses counties via ehealth surveys)

4.  Discussion:

·  (The New) Membership Committee:

o  Grant Wood and Chuck Jaffe: "SDOs used to only be about developing standards. Now they have to become the organizations responsible for interoperability."

o  Market Research, funded by HL7, revealed that our stakeholders had more interest in implementation than they did in standards development.

o  HL7 will broaden its scope to include both standards development and implementation-related products and services.

o  HL7 will change some of its messaging to be friendlier to this non-technical stakeholder group.

o  New member benefits (proposed):

§  Help desk

§  User groups

§  Member advantage webinars

§  Broadened education platform

§  Conformance testing

o  International Council's Role:

§  Support for the evolving scope of the HL7 and the strategic role of the international community

§  Reinforcement of understanding of Affiliate chairs of the new Business Model

o  While technical experts are the backbone of HL7, the Affiliates can help the committee envision new ways of bring value to the organization.

o  Envision people not coming to the WGMs, but hosting their own meetings (that are focused on implementation).

·  John Haydem; BOF Monday evening: User Groups; goal: how to reach out to non-members.

·  Oct 8, 2013: Member Benefit webinar; Grant Wood / Chuck Jaffe

·  Ticia GERBER; ; HL7, Director of Global Partnership and Policy

o  Is reaching out to governments and other stakeholders

o  Focusing on familiar topics such as maternal health and immunization (from a standards perspective)

o  Is planning a summit in WashDC in November 14-15, 2013 named "Beyond Borders: the future of interoperability"

o  Venue: House of Sweden (Embassy)

o  Target Audience: Trade associations, influential governmental folks, media personnel, and philanthropically-related folks.

o  180-200 seats; stipends may not be available

o  Topics:

§  Maternal and Child Health (from a standards perspective) (invited: UNICEF, IDRC, World Bank)

§  LMIC: Tools that are available at the MOH level

§  Mhealth and interoperability

§  Global and regional interoperability frameworks

Puerto Rico

·  How can Puerto Rico best leverage to neighboring Caribbean countries the impetus that MU brings?

·  AHIMA has a corporate extension in Puerto Rico.

Haythem Nakkas' report (University of Portsmouth, UK) (offered by Phil Scott)

·  "Exploring Success Factors in LMIC Settings"

5.  Ongoing/Future Activities:

·  The IMC traditionally schedules a Joint meeting at the WGMs with the Marketing Committee and the Education Committee to request that those committees consider creating strategies and collateral that the IMC can use to perform outreach to LMICs.

·  The IC wondered whether the IMC (and perhaps the Education Committee) could create a project that would create a video record (and archive) the IC "Around the World" sessions and make them available as follows:

o  All sessions: Members-only

o  Only sessions older than 12 months: Publicly available (for free or for a small fee).

·  Videotape the "Around the World" International Council reports

·  Contact:

o  John Hatem; Membership User Group chair; Membership Task Group

o  Grant Wood; Marketing Committee

o  Kai Heitmann; HL7.tv

o  Rene Spronk

·  Ask whether an International Council realm might be willing to fund the effort (if the effort needs funding).

·  Costs:

o  Videotaping, editing, and posting the videos to a website, managing the website, preventing unauthorized access, and enabling access to authorized visitors.

·  Benefits:

o  The IMC could leverage the reports by providing them to IMC candidates (to help entice them to attend the WGMs).

o  The HL7 members could use the reports to show to key members of their sponsoring organizations.

6.  Next Meeting

·  The IMC will meet Sunday Q4 at the January 2013 Working Group Meeting.

7.  Adjournment

·  The meeting adjourned at 1700.

Actions Required:

·  John [DONE] Request for a room for the IMC on Sunday Q4 at the September 2013 WGM.

< End of Meeting >

Appendix 1

IMC’s Geo-Template and Selected Efforts

Europe

1)  Northern Europe

a)  N/A

2)  Western Europe

3)  Eastern Europe

4)  Southern Europe

a)  Greece (Affiliated)

i)  Catherine Chronaki’s efforts

Africa

1)  Eastern Africa

a)  Kenya (non-Affiliated)

i)  Donna Mediero’s efforts

2)  Southern Africa

3)  Western Africa

Americas

1)  North America

a)  Puerto Rico (Affiliated)

i)  Julio Cajiga’s efforts

2)  Central America

3)  South America

Asia

1)  Southern Asia

a)  Indonesia(non-Affiliated)

i)  Gora Datta’s efforts

2)  Western Asia

3)  Eastern Asia

Australia

Appendix 2

IMC Parking Lot

1.  A new tutorial (“How to Maximize the Value of Your HL7 Involvement”) should be developed. We should collect input to the tutorial over the next six months and plan to offer the tutorial at an upcoming Working Group Meeting.

2.  The IMC could showcase (say, at the HL7 Registration Desk area during each WGM) a selected Health Information Technology (HIT) topic that touches all realms.

·  The IMC could encourage the creation of a poster area whereby the IMC, Education Committee, and the Marketing Committee jointly target a topic. For example,

o  Personal Health Records –related activities that are occurring in every realm that is currently represented by the International Council

o  Patient Identification

o  Use of V3 in ambulance-to-EHR communications

o  ePrescribing

o  Patient Safety

o  Decision Support

o  A realm-specific topic (e.g., Africa: Challenges and Opportunities)

o  HL7.TV (youtube-like video) segments

·  The IMC could invite the attendees of the WGM to create a poster according to their own interests (with HL7 offering an HL7-store prize to the winner). Depictions of the posters could be displayed on the HL7 wiki after the HL7 WGM.

·  Consider targeting the first poster session for the next WGM.

Appendix 3

Excerpt from "IMC minutes 20110911.doc"

Background: Technical information about the Millennial Development Goal requirements:

·  MDG 1: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

·  MDG 3: promote gender equality and empower women

·  MDG 4: reduce child mortality

·  MDG 5: improve maternal health

·  MDG 6: combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

·  MDG 7: ensure environmental sustainability

·  MDG 8: develop a global partnership for development

Proposition: Since each country may desire to meet the Millennial Development Goals, and since it would be repetitious for each country to develop Requests-For-Proposals (especially ones that would highlight the need for Standards), it would be good for HL7 to create a suite of RFPs (perhaps as a revenue-generating service):

o  The IMC could offer pre-established RFP-like language that would promote the tendering and use of certain standards. (See Ron Parker)

o  The IMC could offer guidance for helping the candidate Affiliate evaluate responses to the RFP’s tendered by candidate vendors.

o  The IMC could offer a well-vetted set of requirements (e.g., as listed in the EHR-S FM)

o  The IMC could offer advice/experiences regarding Project Management and Change Management (e.g., a Client-Identification project-management template)

o  The IMC could promote the intellectual foundations proffered by SAIF methodology.

o  The IMC could assess the readability, quality, and coherence of the HL7 standards from the novice Affiliates’ perspective.

o  The IMC could offer a set of EHR-Interoperability value propositions:

·  The ability for a MOH to provide or consume Health Information from various healthcare services.

·  Data exchange (and care continuity) between various care-settings.

·  Reduction in costs (e.g., avoidance in duplicating lab tests or medications)

·  Patient Safety

·  Avoidance of the elevation of a patient’s illness

o  After passing a Means-Test for a given set of requirements, the IMC could act as a proxy-sponsor for new/fledgling Affiliates for commissioning requirements-related work by various HL7 WGs. (Ron Parker is available to help scope and define this process.)

< End of document >

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