suggested agenda for joint meeting of IHE Pharmacy and HL7 Pharmacy

[Tom de Jong]

Dear IHE Pharmacites,

 

As you are probably aware, the intent is that both IHE Pharmacy and HL7 Pharmacy will meet in Paris at the Phast offices this coming October. For IHE this will be the next Face-to-Face meeting on October 4 and 5, for HL7 it will be a special Out-of-Cycle meeting on October 5, 6 and 7. The trick is that we made sure there is a 1-day overlap here, so that we have the opportunity to spend time together with the two groups combined.

 

Technically, it would be the people from HL7 Pharmacy who join the IHE F2F meeting on that day, so we want to make sure that IHE still manages to have an effective use of its time. But there is a golden opportunity to have consensus, or at least shared discussion, on some of the ‘hot topics’ that concern both groups. For that purpose, I have taken the liberty of suggesting a proposed agenda, so that we can converge on a common list of topics. This list has been briefly discussed on the HL7 Pharmacy conference call already, but it is essential that IHE feels at ease with it of course.

 

I feel related to the efforts of both groups, so I hope the proposed agenda will match the priorities within IHE as well as HL7 Pharmacy. But rest assured that this is just a suggestion, with input from Jose and Ana, but that it’s in no way a finalized agenda yet. I am hoping that other members of the IHE Pharmacy group will respond with corrections and other suggestions. Also feel free to mention if you think having a 1-day overlap of the meetings is too much (or not enough). The joint meeting is of course a bit of an experiment. It has been discussed with some of the key players in IHE Pharmacy, but it’s essential that we set it up in such a way that everybody feels comfortable with it. Personally, I think it’s a great opportunity to achieve synergy, and increased harmonization, between two groups that have such tremendous overlap in their scope and planning.

 

For the joint session between IHE and HL7, we could look into the following agenda items:

 

·         Introductions, ambitions and timelines

 

Even though some people have met before, it goes without saying that we should start with a brief round of introductions. Next, we could share current results, future ambitions and timelines (not going into details) between the two groups, and identify areas of common interest (other than the ones mentioned below). I wouldn’t want to get stuck at ‘procedural’ discussions for too long, but rather dive into some content-based topics, and then figure out ways to work together effectively in those areas.

 

·         Medication Documentation.

 

Previously known as Medication Reconciliation, but I must admit I like the term Medication Profile even better. Obviously, we need to agree on a common name for the subject;-). Either way, this topic has been discussed on the IHE mail group to some extent. It describes the total set of information you would want to have available when you query for a patient’s full ‘medication profile’ (this could be specialized to current medication, medication history, etc.). It is a combination of prescriptions, dispenses, administrations, AND ‘medication statements’ (including negative ones if applicable). All of these individual items are already defined (in HL7v3), but what’s left is a way to relate them so that they can be used to display a consistent medication profile to the end user. There is already a white paper by Jose, and there is an existing topic in the HL7v3 materials that has the same functional scope. We could have initial investigation via mail before the meeting, and then have a shared discussion at the F2F. Since this has quite profound implications for future work, I think it could be the main topic.

 

·         Perfusion administrations

 

This is something we have talked about before, both at IHE and HL7, and which is still an open issue for both of us. The only challenge will be that Jose is focused on applying V2, while HL7 Pharmacy needs to look at this in terms of V3 (as part of the institutional use cases that we need to cover during the OOC). Therefore, the shared time should focus on functional use cases and capturing all the requirements.

 

·         Workflow management

 

We should probably not spend too much time on this (because we could talk forever;-), but it would be good to see where we stand when it comes to applying XDW to the IHE profiles. We could check whether we can cover the same use cases, both for a document-based implementation that IHE has and for the message-based specification that HL7 Pharmacy has created. The goal is not so much to enforce a single methodology, but to learn from each other and agree there is functional equivalence.

 

·         Expression of substitution

 

This is an item that Ana has raised before, related to the way to express substitution within CDA. There are a few options, and it would be a nice concrete topic to discuss and have a shared resolution for.

 

·         Roadmap planning HL7 – IHE

 

It goes without saying that we can talk about how to move forward in a more coordinated way (depending on our experiences during the discussion of the topics above). This could deal with the sharing of resources (in terms of people and information), but also with coordinated planning.

 

A challenge remains to have both document and messaging solutions, but still make sure that their intent and structure are as much aligned as possible. In other words, to make sure that we have a consistent story to tell the market place. The HL7 Structured Documents work group has a role in that too, and we can talk about ways to engage them. The purpose would not be ‘merge’ the two groups at all, but simply to find ways to make sure that we make good use of each other’s shared perspective.

 

I hope you agree with the basic intent, and I welcome any kind of feedback. By the way, there will probably only be a subset of the regular Pharmacy work group present in Paris, but most of the key members will be there (including the co-chairs). The rest of the HL7 meeting has a separate agenda, but if others have an interest in it, they are of course welcome to be present and take part. For the sake of planning meals etc., it would be good to know in advance who wants to join on the 6^th and 7^th.

 

Best wishes,

Tom
               

[Tom de Jong]

Hello again,

 

I almost forgot that Ana made the perfect suggestion to also tell you what to expect during the other two days of the HL7 Pharmacy out-of-cycle meeting (the days after the IHE Pharmacy F2F meeting). The purpose would be to allow anyone who is not a regular attendee of HL7 Pharmacy meetings, to make a decision about possibly staying to attend one or both days (which is allowed and encouraged).

 

The agenda for the out-of-cycle meeting is quite ‘loose’ at this point, since we have one main topic that we want to focus on, and a lot of the rest will depend on progress during the HL7 Working Group Meeting, which takes place in San Diego, from September 12 thru 15, so prior to the Paris meeting.

 

Roughly, we have the following work items:

 

·         Going through institutional use cases, and capturing all their effects on existing materials.

 

Up to this point the Pharmacy materials were mostly focused on requirements for community use cases (i.e. for ambulatory patients). At our previous out-of-cycle meeting, in Exeter, we started analyzing the extra requirements for institutional use cases (i.e. for inpatients), which are now traditionally covered by using HL7v2 (just like in the corresponding IHE profile). The intent is to take inventory of use cases, prioritize them, and analyze the implications for updates to existing materials.

 

Part of this will deal with perfusion scheduling and administration, for which a functional discussion would be part of the joint session with IHE (so we can continue based on common requirements).

 

·         Possibly doing some extra work as a result of the joint discussion about medication profiles.

 

This will focus on our existing topic ‘Generic Patient-Related Pharmacy Query’, which deals with the retrieval of a coherent set of medication information for a patient. This overlaps strongly with the intent of the ‘medication reconciliation/documentation/profile’ work, to be discussed during the joint.

 

·         Any other items on our action list, which we could prioritize beforehand (at the HL7 WGM).

 

I hope this will help to make your travel plans. The targets for the HL7 meeting will be strongly tied to the materials we need to complete for the January 2012 ballot. We would love to have people join, if they have an active interest in, and can make an active contribution to, the topics mentioned above.

 

I think there will be an RSVP sent out soon, to get a feeling for the number of attendees on each day.

 

Thanks,

Tom