Principles of Health Interoperability HL7 and SNOMED (Health Information Technology Standards)

Health information technology (HIT) promises to deliver the right information at the right time and the right place. Everybody (patient, clinician, manager and payer) stands to benefit from more soundly based decisions, safer care and less waste, errors, delays and duplicated efforts.
This depends on us using computers to share information and make it available when and where it is needed in a way that meets privacy requirements. We need to use appropriate standards to link systems together within and across organizations.
Health Level 7 (HL7) and SNOMED CT are two of the key international standards, which underpin efforts to improve health care interoperability. HL7 provides the structure, rather like English grammar, while SNOMED CT provides words that computers can understand.
This book provides an introduction to healthcare interoperability in general, and these standards in particular, setting out the core principles in a clear readable way for analysts, students and clinicians to understand.
The second edition of this book has been completely revised and extended by four chapters, with new chapters on Privacy and IHE XDS (Cross-enterprise Document Sharing), clinical coding schemes and the SNOMED Concept Model.
The book is organized in three parts. The first part covers the principles of health care interoperability, why it matters, why it is hard and why modelling is an important part of the solution. The second part covers the main HL7 standards: Version 2, Version 3 and CDA standards and related IHE profiles. The third part covers clinical terminology and SNOMED CT.