Mission

The goal of the Emergency Care (EC) Work Group is to bring the unique understandings and perspectives of the emergency health care enterprise to the HL7 standards process. Because effective function of emergency care is mission critical to the entire healthcare system, and because emergency care represents care-settings quite unique from all others, this group seeks to be a reliable source of information and support for the HL7 standards mission. The Work Group will accomplish this goal through participation in the HL7 standards development processes.

Charter

Work Products and Contributions to HL7 Processes

  • Provide a forum for discussion of needs and requirements definition for Electronic Health Record Systems for Emergency Care.
  • Develop specific functions—based on needs and requirements---for Emergency Care EHR Systems.
  • Inform and advise the HL7 Standards Development process with respect to EC specific functions, for the EC Care Setting, according to need.
  • Establish criteria for interoperable documents, applications, and systems to achieve working interoperability across Emergency Care settings.
  • Establish use cases for coordinated care of patients moving through the EC setting.
  • Use established HL7 methodologies to define EHR requirements, including privacy and security requirements, as well as requirements for interoperability as they relate to the emergency care domain.
  • This group recognizes that some of its activities will fall within the scope of other TCs and working groups. Therefore, the EC working group will collaborate with appropriate TCs and working groups to help produce the appropriate standards, including messages and standard documents, to meet EHR requirements, applicable to the EC setting.
  • The Work Group 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.

Formal Relationships With Other HL7 Groups

The EC working group must interact with other technical committees and working groups to create standards in support of EHR function and interoperability. These will include:

  • DESD – the EC Work Group is a member of the Domain Experts Steering Division
  • Patient Care WG – The EC Work Group will need to closely coordinate its activities with the Patient Care-WG to inform its efforts vis-à-vis patient goals, problems, care plans/critical paths, assessments, histories and physicals.
  • EHR WG - The EC Work Group will need to closely coordinate its activities with the EHR-working group to facilitate HL7’s mission of designing standards to support the sharing of electronic health records, especially through the EC environment.
  • PHER WG – The EC Work Group will need to coordinate activities with the Public Health and Emergency Response Work Group.
  • CIC WG – The EC Work group will coordinate activities when appropriate with the Clinical Interoperability Council.

Formal Relationship With Groups Outside of HL7

There are a number of active and potential formal relationships with domestic as well as international groups outside of HL7. Formal relationships will be governed by what are approved by the HL7 Board. Specifically, formal understandings have been established with the following groups:

  • ACEP – American College of Emergency Physicians: The American College (ACEP) is the largest US professional society for Emergency Physicians, representing the vast majority since the inception of the specialty in the late 1970s. There is already an active relationship between this group an ACEP’s Informatics Section, many members of which have been instrumental in this effort. The EC working group is consequently fortunate to be populated with individuals well-known and experienced in the medical informatics community. ACEP has offered its support, not only to the EC working group, but also to HL7 in general.

Mission and Charter reviewed and approved 2022-01-21

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