Health Level 7 (HL7) Consultancy

Health Level Seven (HL7) is an ANSI accredited Standards Developing Organization (SDO) operating in the healthcare arena. Their objective is the production of standards or specifications in the clinical and administrative data domain. Quicksilva is an active member, inputting resources to worldwide HL7 symposiums.

The Delivery Experts

Quicksilva are experts in the HL7 field of development and delivery. We have created a variety of HL7 tools to aid the development and interpretation of the specifications. These tools constitute the HL7 toolset used by a number of HL7 members from around the world including the UK’s NHS.

Our staff were key in setting up the NHS NPfIT Messaging and Communications team in 2003, and creating the methodology used. We were also responsible for the development of the current version of the HL7 messaging toolset in use by the NHS and its suppliers.

Quicksilva have provided HL7 experts on a long and short term basis to support the needs of the NHS in the HL7 messaging arena, as well as to the NHS's major providers.

HL7 version 3 and CDA

As part of evolving the HL7 standard, HL7 opted to take the step of delivering version 3 of the standard using XML.

The NHS has long since adopted the use of the HL7 toolset in order to produce message definitions to support its system and service implementations and so it was a natural evolution for the NHS to adopt HL7 v3 to underpin the NHS NPfIT systems. HL7 v3 is a defined and accepted standard and NPfIT was the first organisation to implement it.

The HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is based on the HL7 v3 Reference Information Model (RIM) and HL7 data types, with various levels of conformance for implementation.

Quicksilva has specialist skills in HL7 version 3 and CDA.