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by lliw 3071 days ago
To be clear, HL7 is a not-for-profit organization which has created several sets of standards over its history (HL7-V1, V2, V3, etc)--those standards are probably what you are referring to. HL7, as an organization, is very much a leader in this space.

FHIR, which is what Apple is using, is its own standard, (created/managed through the HL7 organization), and addresses most of your concerns (https://www.hl7.org/fhir/)

1 comments

> To be clear, HL7 is a not-for-profit organization which has created several sets of standards over its history (HL7-V1, V2, V3, etc)--those standards are probably what you are referring to. HL7, as an organization, is very much a leader in this space.

I'm being sarcastic when I say HL7 isn't a leader. Obviously their psuedo-standards are widespread; they're just terrible.

I haven't dug much into FHIR because, when I last needed to implement any of this, literally nobody was actually using it. That said, based on everything else I've seen, I'm skeptical that it's actually a proper standard in the strict sense. Even the other message types that HL7 has produced are not properly specified, with ambiguous language that allows for multiple interpretations and "valid" (but incompatible) implementations.

It can't be 'properly specified' as that'd mean that there is a single interpretation of medical concepts across all users/customers. This has never been true and probably won't ever be.