[markolschesky]

HL7v2 was invented in 1989. It was invented to meet the needs of then intra-operability between existing HIS systems. HL7 itself is a open organization comprised of a variety of members from vendors to health systems to life sciences/pharma.

HL7v2's problem is that it is 30 years old and probably should have been replaced by something earlier. Then again, so should most X12, mainframes, COBOL, etc. etc. FHIR is good, but the challenge is that the incentives for interoperability are much lower than those for intra-operability.

[snuxoll]

People love to bitch about HL7, but it gets far too much vitriol compared to X12. You want to talk about an antiquated format that should be taken out back and shot, here is your target.

The annoying part is the QACH CORE Connectivity Rule has finally made interacting with health care partners for X12 transactions suck less by providing standard REST and SOAP interfaces for transaction exchange, but we couldn’t be bothered to implement a less shitty transaction format.

HL7 is a work of art in comparison.