Health Level Seven International (HL7), the global leader in developing and implementing data, functional, and interoperability standards for healthcare IT, announced it is making much of its intellectual property (IP) freely available under licensing terms.
The landmark decision represents HL7’s commitment to the betterment of healthcare worldwide by ensuring that all stakeholders have equal access to its HIT standards. The new policy becomes effective today and includes all currently published standards, implementation guides and other select IP as determined on a case-by-case basis.
“By making our standards freely available, we hope to accelerate the evolution of healthcare information exchange at the very basic levels, and ultimately to impact wellness and healthcare delivery on a global scale. This decision has met with overwhelming support from members and other stakeholders,” said Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of HL7.
In conjunction with freely licensing its IP, HL7 also plans to revise its membership model later this year. In addition to the existing benefits of membership, new benefits and services, many of which are designed to assist with implementation, are currently under development and may include: extensive expansion of deeply discounted or free education programs and training, exclusive access to HL7 experts, certification of HL7 conformance; a professionally supported Help Desk; and enhanced testing of individual expertise in HL7 development, training, and implementation.
“We expect not only to retain our current members, who are committed to playing a continuing role in the development of high quality standards, but also to attract new members who understand the value of supporting standards development and implementation support services. Membership in HL7 enables organizations to influence the development of standards that will shape the healthcare of the future, as well as providing access to resources, tools, and community that make implementation easier and more effective,” said Dr. Jaffe.
More information on HL7 membership and standards is available at www.HL7.org.
