A coalition of health insurers working to develop portability standards for personal health records has enlisted the help of standards organization Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Health Level Seven Inc.
America's Health Insurance Plans, Washington, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Chicago, a year ago announced they would work to give health plan members the ability to move their personal health data when their coverage changes. They have since developed an implementation guide, "Implementation Guide for the Personal Health Record Data Transfer Between Health Plans," which contains technical standards, a data dictionary and operating rules for the transfer of PHR data elements between insurance plans.
Now the payer groups will turn over the maintenance of the technical standards components of the implementation guide to HL7. The standards organization also will further develop and communicate proposed changes to the guide.
HL7 in early 2008 will publish a PHR-S Functional Model Draft Standard for Trial Use version of the PHR standards for the industry to use while original standards are refined into an ANSI-accredited version.
For more information, go to hl7.com, bcbsa.com and ahip.com.
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