Vocabulary Work Group SWOT analysis
Updated February 2016
Version 1.1
Strengths
Ø Services are Sought - People look to the Work Group to provide guidance on how to use terminology within the various domains
Ø Wide and Deep terminological knowledge and experience - The Work Group has leadership and participants with deep knowledge and in some cases, long-standing experience in this area
Ø Cross SDO liaison - The Work Group has leadership and membership with active participation in other SDOs
Ø Close and Direct Interation with the HL7 Terminology Authority (HTA) – as single point of contact for SNOMED CT and other external terminologies, and providing tactical support to the HTA
Ø Focus on Quality of HL7 Terminology Content
Ø Facilitator Roles and Responsibilities clearly defined
Weaknesses
Ø Limited resources - There are limited resources to accomplish the activities in scope for this Work Group
Ø Inadequate tooling - Existing tooling is inadequate to perform key tasks, and limited technical expertise to build and/or improve upon our existing custom tooling
Ø Existing documentation is insufficient
Ø Facilitators currently have insufficient training
Opportunities
Ø Current Govt Initiatives - Take advantage of climate of government initiatives that bring higher focus on terminology
Ø Leverage international SDO activities and resources – such as participating in the harmonization of glossaries with CEN, ISO, GS1, IHE, IHTSDO and LOINC, parallel standards such as the upcoming ISO bundled ballot packages, etc.
Ø Take advantage of technology and our expertise to help stakeholders access and use the HL7 Terminology Resources
Ø Work with the other HL7 bodies towards the unification of terminology across the HL7 product families that use terminology (V2, V3, CDA, FHIR, and CIMI)
Ø The CIMI IHTSDO extension presents an opportunity to explicitly integrate unavailable concepts needed for HL7 Standards into a SNOMED CT extension
Ø Use of tools and products to support vocabulary management (including IHTSDO Workbench, SNOMED CT, RELMA, USCRS, others)
Ø Develop Facilitator training materials and tutorials
Threats
Ø Lack of response (due to lack of resources)
o Losing credibility due to inability to respond to key issues
o The amount of time necessary to respond to needs encourages implementers to adopt other (often suboptimal) solutions
Ø Lack of understanding of issue complexity outside the WG - Vocabulary issues can seem far simpler than they are, creating the impression that the committee is less capable than it is
Ø The CIMI IHTSDO extension may be a very large amount of work:
o This will require HL7 management and publishing
o It will force some reallocation of HL7 resources
o The must be work put into exploring and documenting the use of the extension in WorkGroups other than CIMI
Ø Inconsistent and incomplete documentation and vocabulary structures within and across the HL7 standards families continues to create confusion
Ø Lack of resources
o Tooling to publish & maintain key HL7 content including; the OID Registry, the V3 Vocab repository and the V2 Vocabulary Tables is causing difficulties to implementers
o Time required for the infrastructure responsibilities of the Vocabulary WorkGroup within the publishing and balloting calendar cycles
o Inability of volunteer participants to carry through to completion puts some of the longer term projects at risk, and can lead to general doubt in the Vocab WG ability to handle long term efforts
Goals
Ø Maintain OID Registry with approval for new OID requests
Ø Maintain the V3 Vocab repository
Ø Maintain table 0396 (V2 content for registered coding systems) including new requests, changes to existing entries, publishing on HL7 website
Ø Document HL7 vocabulary design and maintain the documentation guidelines on the principles of vocabulary message content and structure over time
Ø Educate stakeholders via tutorials and improved documentation
Ø Educate standards developers to improve HL7 product specification and documentation and reduce load on harmonization process.