About HL7

HL7 is a standard for electronic data exchange in healthcare environments. It standardizes the format and protocol for the exchange of certain key data sets among healthcare computer application systems. HL7 is designed to be flexible, allowing the various systems that send or receive patient information to share and apply data as needed. Because of this diversity in systems (data models, operating systems, communication environments, and so on), HL7 cannot be a plug and play interface standard.

HL7, or Health Level Seven, is also the name of an organization consisting of technical committees and special interest groups whose goal is to provide standards for the exchange, management, and integration of data that support clinical patient care and the management, transfer, and assessment of healthcare services. More specifically, the goal is to create flexible, cost effective approaches, standards, guidelines, methodologies, and related services for interoperability between healthcare information systems.