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Let me know if you'd like to know more. Jonathan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a brief announcement of the setting up of a UK affiliate organisation to HL7: At a meeting yesterday, hosted by McKesson HBOC in Warwick, stakeholders from the vendor community, the clinical professions, other standards organisations and the NHS Information Authority agreed unanimously to create an organisation in the UK that would seek affiliate status to HL7 USA. The full charter and mission statement of the UK affiliate organisation will be published on the web when relationships with HL7 USA are finalised and the necessary UK infrastructure is in place. In the meantime, it was agreed that the general remit of HL7-UK would be: 1 Standards setting within the HL7 mechanisms: Influencing the development of future versions of HL7. 2 Co-ordination of future work in HL7 with future work in other standards bodies of relevance to the UK. 3 Localisation: enabling vendors, purchasers, users and consultants to implement existing versions of HL7 in the UK by sharing experiences/ reaching agreement on issues such as patient identification, address formats, local coding systems. 4 Support for implementors: Testing facilities, knowledge of other projects, provision of documentation, contact points etc. 5 Increasing awareness of HL7: publicising HL7 developments on the UK website, presenting HL7 issues at UK conferences, informing other local standardisation efforts. It was also agreed that a Technical subcommittee should be set up immediately to consider: 1 The local UK resolution of ambiguities present in HL7 V2.n arising out of the need either for customisation of the existing standard or absence of necessary detail within the standard. 2 How the existing HL7 V3 RIM might meet the UK requirement and to make early representation to the parent body of any changes that may be considered necessary. 3 How the work of the HL7 vocabulary groups relate to known developments in the international standardisation of terminologies and the associated UK requirement and to make appropriate representation to the HL7 parent group. The technical subcommittee and the parent committee will be open to all comers based on a fee structure to be announced. The technical subcommittee will be chaired by Brian Love of the NHS Information Authority. Secretariat and web support for the group will be provided by organisations within the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge courtesy of Dr. Jonathan Kay of the Academy of Colleges Information Group. The interim chair of HL7-UK is to be Dr. Leo Fogarty of the Academy of Colleges Information Group. This appointment is to be reviewed at six months following the finalisation of the relationship with HL7 USA and the provision of the necessary infrastructure for HL7-UK. HL7-UK business will be conducted on an open list-server to be set up by the secretariat. The next full meeting of HL7-UK will take place in McKesson HBOC offices in London on 19th January 2000 - details to be announced. Negotiations are under way to set up a further meeting and associated presentations in Harrogate during HC2000. An early meeting of the technical subcommittee will be announced in due course. HL7-UK looks forward to working with the UK healthcare community in furthering the application of technology solutions to improved patient care.