When responding to this Discussion Board thread, it may be helpful to consider the following mock scenario: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is developing a new electronic Registry to enable healthcare providers to report a new, but rare communicable illness.
Uniform standards are essential for systems to interoperate and exchange data in meaningful ways. Having standards reduces development costs, increases integration, and facilitates the collection …show more content…
Most health care standards are produced by this method. AN example is the Health Level 7 (HL7) standard for clinical-data interchange (CH 7 pg 215)
To improve upon previous successful standards, gap standards must be implemented. These gap standards have no champion but are necessary for completeness of an interoperable data exchange network. The need for these standards is not as obvious as for the primary standards, people are less likely to volunteer to do work, putting stress on the voluntary approach.(CH 7 pg 215). In such cases, the need of such standards must be sold to the volunteers or developed by paid professionals (Ch 7 pg 216).
A standard will generally go through several versions on its path to maturity. The first attempts at implementation are frequently met with frustration as participating vendors interpret the standard differently and as areas not addressed by the standard are encountered. These problems may be be dealt with in subsequent versions of the standard. Backward compatibility is a major concern as the standard evolves. How can the standard evolve, over time, and still be economically responsible to both vendors and users? An implementation guide is usually produced to help new vendors profit from the experience of the early implementers. Risks are financial and conformity (ch 7 pg