Conformance

Mission 

The mission of the Conformance Work Group is to support all conformance activities of users of the HL7 standards. This includes the localization of HL7 standards to suit specific real-world situations, the creation of implementation guides, and the mechanism to specify, interpret, and test conformance.

Charter

The Conformance Work Group provides a forum for users of HL7 standards to discuss general implementation guidance, conformance issues including guidance on testing conformance constructs, and to share best practices, success stories, and challenges related to the use of HL7 standards in specific real-world situations. This does not include (supporting) the development of software incorporating HL7 standards, testing and certification, and the development tools.

• Conformance is a conduit for end-users to provide feedback into the development process for implementation, conformance, and testing guidelines supporting the HL7 standards, as well as to formulate proposed enhancements to the standards.
• Conformance provides specifications related to the testing of conformance. In order to be able to accomplish this it produces normative specifications and supportive recommendations that define conformance based on the rules and mechanisms for constraint and localization.
• Conformance has the editorial responsibility for  HL7 v2 Conformance Methodology Specification
• Conformance also has editorial responsibility for reflecting the conformance, compliance, and compatibility in existing methodologies (e.g. HL7 Development Framework) and development of future methodologies (e.g. SAIF Implementation Guide).
• Conformance has the editorial responsibility for the Refinement, Constraint and Localization (RCL) document for V3 with collaborations from MnM and Vocabulary work groups.
• Conformance provides implementation and conformance guidance during development of proposed standards with applicable Work Groups and HL7 standards implementations
• Conformance provides guidance on the interpretation and testing of conformance concepts

Note: this WG will not provide conformance certification or validation for implementations of HL7 standards.

Conformance works with all interested parties to develop and support open source tools to facilitate the implementation of HL7 standards, which includes tools for conformance testing and the authoring of implementation guides. The development of software that incorporates HL7 standards is out of scope for Conformance.

Conformance works to promote conformance constructs for use with FHIR. 

Conformance will develop specifications using the principles and language of the Services Aware Interoperability Framework (SAIF) Canonical Definition (CD) and the restrictions and specializations of the HL7 SAIF Implementation Guide (IG) to ensure traceability from conceptual to logical to implementable specifications. When submitting artifacts or methodology to the HL7 SAIF IG the Work Group will develop this content in compliance with the principles and language of the SAIF CD.

WG Mission and Charter Tracking