Interoperability Testing
hl7 is a weak standard. Any two organizations that are speaking hl7 today have no advantage when trying to use hl7 to speak to a third organization. CCR and CCD will suffer the same flaws, unless there is an objective manner to determine compliance in an automated fashion.
There have been notable FOSS efforts in this space for some time, NIST MITRE etc. etc. However there are two new developments that bear mentioning. One is a loose consortium of interoperability testing systems called Cypress tools. Cypress is not itself a project, but a meta-project. It is a collaboration that is made up of many of the most relevant parties, with NIST taking its usual neutral third-party role, as well as a tool developer itself.
The other significant development is the Laika project, which is essentially a front end to the interoperability tests that is used for CCHIT. The tool is co-developed by MITRE and CCHIT.
Consensus. I usually use that word instead of collaboration. Decisions are made by consensus in an open source world. You start from where you agree and work outward, rather than starting from where you disagree and working inward.
Funny you didn’t mention any of the work Open Health Tools is doing. Any reason why?
I agree decisions by consensus, but progress by collaboration, coordination and constructive competition.