Saturday, September 28, 2013

CDA is Dead

It must be true, because isn't that what John Halamka said during the plenary session Monday morning at the HL7 Working group meeting?  And isn't that what it means when one of the cochairs proposes that we put CDA Release 3 on hold to focus on FHIR?

No, that's not what we are talking about.  Clinical documents aren't dead.  The architecture is just taking a slightly different direction.  Interest in CDA Release 3 as a specification based directly on HL7 Version 3 and the RIM, is waning, in part because many national programs (including our own) have just made a significant investment in the existing CDA Release 2.  There is still some interest in fixing the wobbly bits that we've been complaining about, and aligning with the current RIM (variable named CDA R2.1, 2.5 or some other value less than 3.0).  That's not where I'd be spending my time, but I wouldn't be adverse to having that happen.  But the new frontiers bit is exploring structured documents in FHIR, rather than where've we've been before.

I expand on this a bit in the following snippet from an interview I gave last week at HL7. 



Clinical Document Architecture isn't going away.  We may just be looking at using some new building materials.

So, if the CDA is dead, long live the CDA!

   Keith

P.S.  See also this post via Grahame Grieve



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