Monday, September 12, 2005
Brailer's Wake-Up Call to Standards Developers
Today at the HL7 Annual Plenary Meeting in San Diego, David Brailer, President Bush's National Health Information Technology Coordinator issued a wake-up call to the healthcare standards community. He stated that the standards development infrastructure was "fatally broken", with some 30 different and competing standards development organizations. Yet he claimed that interoperability is his no. 1 priority and depends on standards.
He demanded "use-case driven" standards. If the standards community cannot agree on what is needed to achieve a business task, then he is putting in place a process that will choose "singular" solutions for each use case.
He observed that people take risks when they adopt standards! Ultimately standards are about money. They change the power structure by giving more power to ultimate customers (and their intermediaries) and away from system suppliers.
He demanded "use-case driven" standards. If the standards community cannot agree on what is needed to achieve a business task, then he is putting in place a process that will choose "singular" solutions for each use case.
He observed that people take risks when they adopt standards! Ultimately standards are about money. They change the power structure by giving more power to ultimate customers (and their intermediaries) and away from system suppliers.
