HL7 Version 3.0 Task Force (V3TF) Meeting Minutes July 16, 1993 Admiral's Club Executive Center O'Hare Airport Chicago, IL Agenda I. Approval of Minutes from Previous Meeting II. Appointment of Acting Secretary III. Syntax Notation and Encoding Rules A. Criteria for Deciding B. Discussion C. Decision Process IV. Functional Scope of Version 3 V. Character Set Issues VI. Version 3 Security Issues VII. Organization of Version 3 Report VIII. Plans for Presenting Version 3 at Plenary Attendees Wes Rishel Ed Hammond Gary Dickinson Mark Shafarman Dave Carlson Mead Walker Wayne Tracy Absentees John Hoben John May John Quinn Mark Tucker Pat Cahill Clem McDonald Jim Demetriades Minutes I. Approval of Minutes from Previous Meeting ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY: Minutes from May meeting were approved. II. Appointment of Acting Secretary Dave Carlson was appointed acting secretary in John Hoben's absence. III. Syntax Notation and Encoding Rules A. Criteria for Deciding Discussion of Wes' white paper on this subject, detailed in 5/30/93 Email message. This was accepted unanimously with the additions cited below. Wes will produce the completed document. Addition...Clarity and understandability should be part of the criteria. Addition...page 4, ACCEPTABILITY TO MEMBERSHIP, "Acceptability by the vendor community is considered extremely critical." B. Discussion Should we have encoding rules? Ed felt we should have multiple syntaxes and that syntax should be separate from content. We don't need to be compatible "syntax-wise" with other standards (X12, ASN.1). Dave cautioned that if we want to support multiple encoding rules we should be careful how the Version 3 document is formatted and organized so as to appear not to "bless" a specific encoding rule syntax. Ed recommended putting the encoding rules into the Implementation Guide. Wes listed our options: No encoding rules? Multiple encoding rules (To Be Determined): Should the rules be in the standard? Should one be picked "blessed"? (Existing HL7, X12, EDIFACT, ASN.1) Gary raised the issue, "If we preserve our own HL7 encoding rules, how do we harmonize?" It was clarified that there is a difference between a notational language, such as ASN.1 and a set of encoding rules like ASN.1's Basic Encoding Rules (BER). Options for encoding rules include: BER EDIFACT HL7 ACR/NEMA (BER-like) Discussions of Mark Tucker's documents on the subject of notational language and encoding rules were discussed. The work Mark has done was commended and very much appreciated. Wes summarized the options: 1. ML7 vs. ASN.1 vs. Others 2. ER7 as 1 set of encoding rules 3. CEN Model 4. LYNN a data modeling language 5. 'Tightly Coupled' CMIP We decided to defer 4 to Mead and his group Data Modeling Gary: CEN Model comes at it from a relationship between applications and scenarios which is different than HL7 Data Modeling group's approach. C. Decision Process ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY: We recommend adoption of ASN.1 as a notational language to describe version 3.0 messages. A notational language "describes the structure and information content of messages, such as those which might be exchanged between application processes." (citation from ASN.1 Tutorial & Reference by Steedman). The Control Group will enumerate a subset for HL7 purposes. ADOPTED (One abstention): We recommend the non-exclusive use of the existing HL7 encoding rules extended as necessary to support the version 3.0 HL7 notational language. Note: Gary abstained based on the not harmonized issue. Historically, the next adopted motion addresses Gary's concern, but he felt he needed to abstain because of the order of the motions. ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY: We recommend the Control Group consider the ER7 document as a "white paper" starting point for previously adopted motion. ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY: Version 3.0 will support alternate encoding schemes where required for HISPP MSDS harmonization. There was discussion on using ASN.1 BER. It was thought that if we do it should come as part of the HISPP MSDS process. IV. Functional Scope of Version 3 Sent back to subcommittee with the following comments: 1. We are about messages. 2. Deal with Clinical Data and Orders rather than Ancillary Data Reporting. 3. Planning and assessment of patient care. 4. Refer to Mead's document on High Level Data Model, these are the objects we care about. 5. Define institution. 6. Take into account Interactive SQL 7. Inclusion of multi-media in transaction within our scope V. Character Set Issues Wes will draft a white paper on this topic, using CEN PT007 Standard as a basis. VI. Version 3 Security Issues Wayne recommended we should not do anything on security. Ed said we should address application security. Application Security: Wes listed the appropriate levels of application security: - Field - Patient - Application or Function - Message Wayne will send Wes notes from CPRI meeting, Wes will draft a position paper for the List Server. Encryption, Authentication: ADOPTED UNANIMOUSLY: These should be accommodated at a lower level protocol. VII. Organization of Version 3 Report Not discussed. VIII. Plans for Presenting Version 3 at Plenary. There will be a conference call on August 2, 1:30 pm EST, duration: 2 hours. Conference call topics: - Functional scope - Security - Presentation to Working Group - Summary document - Transition issues * economic impact ======================================================================