Keith Boone, well known and liked Health IT standards geek has written up a proposal that would make the next release of HL7 CDA based on HTML5 rather than XHTML.

I have just become more deeply familiar with this set of standards as the result of the extensive research I have done on my new book on meaningful use  of Health IT.

I can say, without a moment of hesitation, that this is a really good idea.

Everyone should support this proposal, b/c otherwise, CDA is a huge mess.

Which is not to say that an HTML5 version would not also be a huge mess. But I believe that it would be less of one.

-FT