Health Level 7 (HL7)

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. (HL7) is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited, standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7's 2,000 members represent over 500 corporate members, including 90 percent of the largest information systems vendors serving healthcare and the federal government.

HL7 has also been identified by the IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) as one of the key standards that can truly help provide healthcare companies the ability to seamlessly integrate their imaging departments. Based on ISO (International Standards Organization) seventh level of the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection), HL7 is rapidly becoming one of the most dominant standards for any information technology industry. Emageon's products strongly support the IHE's model for HL7 standardized messaging, to the point that the products' default HL7 infrastructure conforms directly to the technical framework set forth by IHE.

Emageon's enterprise image management system and the RIS are synchronized through our integrated HL7 bi-directional interface. This HL7 component is embedded within our high-availability cluster and includes multi-castor functionality. Examples of internal applications that require HL7 data are prefetching and auto-routing which are supported by our multi-castor.

Download the Emageon HL7 Interface Specification here.