Dear Colleagues, You are invited to the 8th HL7 Australia Conference on July 28 and 29 in Melbourne, co-located with the 2005 Health Informatics Conference (HIC'05). Australian health information system connectivity today is primarily achieved via the use of HL7 V2.x messages. However, due to the need to improve the reliability of health care messaging and to communicate increasingly more complex clinical concepts, there is a case for considering the use of HL7 v.3 methods, with a view to these potentially replacing V2.x messages. A number of countries, most notably the UK, the Netherlands and Mexico, have also adopted HL7 V3 messaging. Australia needs to learn from their experiences and plan its approach to the use of such messages in electronic health records (EHRs), including our planned national e-health network, HealthConnect. It is mooted that the architecture for HealthConnect is to be based on an openEHR derived model, which draws upon the openEHR archetype methodology to represent clinical concepts. What will this mean for HL7 messaging, technical connectivity between existing systems and functionality? This conference will provide you with a very practical overview of the V3 and openEHR methods along with unique opportunities to debate the details of these concepts with the experts. Topics to be covered at the conference are: - Messaging and EHRs – technical and functional perspectives
- Boundaries for various system connectivity solutions
- HL7 v2.x, v3 and openEHR implementation strategies
To give us an update on the latest implementation efforts and other exciting HL7 and other healthcare standards developments from around the globe, we are pleased to welcome as speakers: - Charlie McCay - Chair HL7 Implementation Committee; Chair HL7 UK
- Lloyd McKenzie - Co-Chair HL7 Modeling and Methodology Technical Committee
- Sam Heard, MD, Co-Chair HL7 Electronic Health Records Technical Committee; CEO and Clinical Director, Ocean Informatics
Please see the program below for more details and register soon! Note that HL7 Australia members in good standing enjoy a reduced registration fee of $490 if paid prior to 8 July 2005. We look forward to welcoming you to share knowledge and experiences in Melbourne. Klaus Veil Evelyn Hovenga Chair, HL7 Australia Board Member - Education, HL7 Australia | 
