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The week kicks of with the Affiliate Council - where the various HL7 country organizations meet to discuss international (organizational) issues. This effectively is the parliament of HL7 .. 18 countries are represented.

Amongst the various updates was a report from the board (the HL7 excutive). Decisions for 2009 include the site of the international 2010 working group meeting (currently, 1 out of 3 meetings is held outside of the US). Rumor has it that the site is likely to be Rio de Janeiro.

Another topic of discussion is related to the creation of a US affiliate. Do we need a US affiliate or some other US focused organization? The US currently doesn't have a country level organization - the original core of the international organization consisted of US members. But things have changed.. not the least the increasing requirement to localize HL7 standards for use in the US.

Ed Hammond (the current chair of the HL7 organization) comments on the international nature of the HL7 organization:

Catherine Chronaki, one of the Affiliate Directors (a representative of the affiliates to the HL7 board) presented some figures based on the HL7.org website access data for 2008. An analysis of interest are the top countries in terms of origin of the visitor (for all of 2008). Please note that these statistics are based on the www.hl7.org domain (only) - it doesn't include the number of visits made to the affiliate website (e.g. www.hl7.org.uk or www.hl7.fi).

1. United States 250,621
2. Netherlands 13,130
3. Canada 12,190
4. Germany 8,739
5. Japan 7,868
6. United Kingdom 7,106
7. India 7,019
8. Australia 5,902
9. Italy 5,348
10. Brazil 4,545
11. Taiwan 4,464
12. Turkey 4,264
13. France 3,858
14. Colombia 2,660
15. Switzerland 2,660

Taken into account that some of the countries listed don't have a large population it provides an idea of the level of interest in HL7 within the listed countries.

Later in the day the various affiliates each reported about their highlights in terms of activities and projects. Some of them actually didn't contain much news - and yet again, some surprised me and provided new ideas.

The above are my observations for the sunday. My agenda for the remainder of this week is filled to the brim - with up to 40 committees meeting at any one time, and a wide range of interest, there are a series of planning conflicts. The next few posts will be about the specifics of some of the topics covered this week.

-Rene

PermaLink to this page: http://www.ringholm.de/column/hl7_wgm_orlando.htm

Index of columns:

• The changing role of HL7 country organizations (Jul 16, 2010)
• Implementing HL7 version 3 - the book (May 06, 2010)
• Adding openness to a closed world (Feb 09, 2010)
• How to lower the hurdle for HL7 v3 implementers (Jan 21, 2010)
• HL7 v3 deployment statistics (Dec 17, 2009)
• There's Trouble in Paradigm (Sep 25, 2009)
• Internationalization of HL7 (Sep 24, 2009)
• HL7 UK signs deal with Ringholm to deliver HL7 v2/v3 training courses in London (Sep 17, 2009)
• The use of HL7 in South Africa (Aug 20, 2009)
• The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam (Apr 17, 2009)
• The HL7 UK AGM and RIMBAA (Apr 16, 2009)
• The HL7 Wiki reaches 2000 pages (Mar 02, 2009)
• The HL7 roadmap for CDA R3 and the CCD (Jan 17, 2009)
• HL7 Affiliates Meeting in Orlando (Jan 11, 2009)
• Swiss and Dutch HL7 News (Dec 31, 2008)
• Devices and Prizes (Nov 22, 2008)
• HL7 in Norway: a situation report (Sep 02, 2008)
• Russian whitepaper (Jul 09, 2008)
• The HL7 Interoperability Conference - IHIC 2008 (May 30, 2008)
• HL7 creates a RIM Based Application Architecture (RIMBAA) group (May 18, 2008)
• Notes from the HL7 WGM in Phoenix (May 08, 2008)
• Germany embraces CDA eReferral document specification (May 02, 2008)
• HL7 v3 RIM based applications: an unintended side effect (Jan 19, 2008)
• Collaborative Tools (Jun 21, 2007)
• HL7 ist Pflicht in der deutschen Telematikinfrastruktur (German, Mar 16, 2007)
• HL7 based Tree inventory system (Jan 30, 2007)
• The link between HL7 and Open Source Software (Jan 06, 2007)
• Workflow Bribery (Sep 15, 2006)
• Timezones in HL7 (Jan 23, 2004)
• Controlled vocabularies: "@*%!!!" ? (Sep 01, 2003)
• Trusting the other Party (Nov 01, 2002)

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