Concall-20080519

TSC - Technical Steering Committee

Monday, May 19th, 2008 11:00 AM (US Eastern Time, GMT -5)
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Attendance

Expected

• CTO: John Quinn
• Domain Experts: Jim Case (primary), Austin Kreisler (alternate)
• Foundation & Technology: Ioana Singureanu (primary), Woody Beeler (alternate)
• Structure & Semantic Design: Calvin Beebe (primary), Gregg Seppala (alternate)
• Technical & Support Services: Ken McCaslin (primary), Helen Stevens Love (alternate)
• Affiliate: Frank Oemig,
• ARB Chair: Charlie Mead
• HQ: Karen Van Hentenryck

invited

• Charles Jaffe (CEO); Ed Hammond (HL7 Chair); Chuck Meyer (HL7 Vice Chair)

Apologies

• Gregg Seppala (S&SD SD)
• Ioana Singureanu (FT SD)

Agenda

1. (5 min) Meeting Admin
   1. Roll Call - The following individual participated on the call: Woody Beeler, Calvin Beebe, Austin Kreisler, Charlie McCay, Jim Case, Charlie Mead, John Quinn, and Karen Van Hentenryck
   2. Accept Agenda - Charlie McCay suggested a short discussion related to the format of the Monday evening co-chairs meeting; Van Hentenryck noted that there has been an out-of-cycle ballot request from the EHR commmittee relative to their Behavioral Health Functional Profile.
   3. Approve Minutes from meeting-20080503 and meeting-20080504 - Approval of minutes was deferred to the next call.
2. (20 min) Standing Committee Reports/Approvals
   1. CEO Report - Jaffe was not on the call and thus no report was submitted.
   2. CTO Report - Quinn’s report is provided below.
      • The ArB has started a process of peer review of a draft dynamic model framework document. The discussion has been spirited. The ArB is also planning interim meeting(s) to further work on the dynamic model framework & scope documents as well as the SOA aware Enterprise Reference Architecture Specification with an initial goal of presentation at the next WGM. Charlie Mead (ArB chair) will present and discuss this with the TSC during our May 19th conference call.
      • Kathleen Connor, Patrick Lloyd, Sarah Ryan, Gregg Seppala, Mollie Ullman-Cullere (via conference call), Sue Mitchell and many other recognizable HL7 members attended a three day face-to-face committee meetings of HITSP in Phoenix on Monday May 12th through Wednesday May 14th. In sharing notes and observations among our members there is a lot of concern about HITSP’s approach and the likelihood that any of the Implementation Specifications being produced will be usable. Among my observations that I shared among our group with general concurrence were:
        • The Implementation Specifications are in general lacking or at least lacking focus on developing a specification for the complete 1-6 layer stack below and application-to-application layer set of artifacts. Any user implementing them would be left to their own to select suitable 1-6 features and this would undoubtedly create incompatible message/document interfaces.
        • Vocabulary specification appears to be at best weak…maybe its just too early in the cycle for the latest set of workflows that are driving the next set of ISs.
        • The sets of technologies that are being selected to support a given workflow appears to be exceedingly complex and impractical. One element of a workflow is supported by a HL7 V2 message; another of the same workflow is supported by a V3 message, CDA document, IHE specification or a DICOM message. The overarching issue appears to be the expediency of meeting a time goal for publication of the ISs. However, attempts to discuss underlying policy or methodology are met with an “out of scope” rejection from the committee chairs (or at least I am told, since I did not personally witness this particular action).
        • Apparently HITSP still strives to use an “immediate solution” (i.e., CCD) for any piece of clinical information that might appear to be a normal subset of the information contained in a CCR/CCD document. HITSP continues to need “existing standards” to meet its mandate but appears to be really search for “standard implementation guides” that can be easily pieced into an HITSP IS.
        • Apparently the US NHIN projects have decided to not use the heretofore created (if applicatble) HITSP ISs. I have heard that hey have claimed that they are too difficult to implement and ONC has given them an out to use their own custom web-services based interfaces for the existing projects. This is a particularly ominous bad sign for the adoption of standards in the HIE market.
        • HITSP’s next meetings are in June in Washington DC (June 11-13 for the HITSP committee/domain meetings and a HITSP panel meeting on June 23).
   3. ARB report - Charlie Mead spoke about the three face-to-face meetings they are planning between now and the September WGM and what they hope to accomplish. Around Dynamic Model, the ArB will commit to building a first draft specification on HL7 in an SOA environment. Inclusion of a business architecture and governance were also part of these discussions. Meetings are scheduled for June, July and August. No everyone will come to each meeting but some of the ArB members will be at each of the three meetings. They've scheduled the first meeting for June 16-18 in Rockville, MD. Does this need to operate as a specific project. Will include Dynamic mode, governance and assumption about a business architecture. Beeler expressed some concern about this meeting as it sounds different than what was described in Phoenix. Members of the other committees that had been working on the dynamic model are invited to attend. Patrick Lloyd in particular expressed an interest in this work and he's been invited. John Quinn will call Patrick directly to ensure that he understands that his input is valuable and being requested. Quinn also noted that he's asked the ArB to make SOA a central portion of the architecture. He sees messaging, documents and services as the three legs on the architecture stool. The ArB will work to produce a strawman document that takes into account the input from Phoenix and the TSC. MOTION by Beeler: To approve this approach to deliver an Enterprise Architecture; seconded John Quinn. Motion passed unanimously. ACTION ITEM: Van Hentenryck will make the June meeting announcement to the membership. If they wish to attend, they should contact Charlie Mead. Charlie Mead asked if the ArB should post items/draft as they go or wait until they have something substantive. The TSC felt they should post their materials to the wiki site as they become available. Charlie Mead left the call at the end of the ArB report and the group no longer had quorum.
   4. Request for out-of-cycle ballot for the EHR Behavioral Health Profile - There was brief discussion regarding this request with the general feeling being that approval of these types of requests without guidelines sets bad precedence. The project itself was approved at the TSC face-to-face meeting in Phoenix. Kreisler suggested that the group review the draft out-of-cycle criteria. One of the proposed critera is that work group have a quality review process outlined. This is the biggest risk with any out-of-cycle ballot request. For this particular request, the Steering Division co-chairs needs to seek clarification with the EHR work group as to whether they plan to conduct a normative or DSTU ballot. No on the call objects to this document being balloted out-of-cycle, but if the work group wishes to conduct a normative ballot, Beebe should caution them that the TSC has concerns regarding quality. ACTION ITEM: Beebe will follow up with Van Dyke on the desired ballot type (normative or DSTU) and post the response to the TSCadmins listserv. Quinn and McCay were empowered to make the decision.
   5. Affiliates Report - Nothing to report.
   6. Domain Experts - Nothing to report
   7. Foundation & Technology - The Steering Division approved the Project Scope Statement for Dynamic Framework Requiremetns submitted by the ArB during the call on May 13th. However, the ArB intended to submit the document as a deliverable for an existing project rather than a brand new scope statement for a new project. The document was sent for review on May 14th and the SD was given until May 16th to review the document: Definitions and Assumptions - Dynamic Framework and to provide feedback. To date, four additional requirements were suggested to the project team for consideration. The SD discussed them on the list.
      • Provide a deterministic mapping of current HL7-specific behavioral concepts (triggers, application roles, interactions, message wrappers) to standard- based behavioral concepts specified by the new framework.”
      • Describe system behavior and receiver responsibilities (e.g. Order Processing, V2 Chapter 2 acknowledgment processing)
      • Provide a standard-based, computable representation of the system behaviors and receiver responsibilities (e.g. WSDL, WSDL-CDL, BPEL)
      • Publish system behavior and receiver responsibilities specifications as a web site (e.g. similar to javadoc) or “book” reports (RTF, PDF, etc.)
   8. Structure & Semantic Design - Motion: Suggest that the start date for non-Pubs-db ballots be included in the HL7 ballot schedule on the web site and that the deadline for submission be only 30 prior to the close of ballot. Beeler noted that the request is problematic in that Don Lloyd needs a couple of days to get the content on the ballot site. This will be deferred to the next call, but Beeler cautioned against accommodating a single committee. Instead, the goal should be to draft a policy that can comfortably be applied to all committees.
   9. Technical & Support Services -
3. (30 min) Discussion topics
   1. Monday evening co-chairs meeting format for September - McCay suggested that start dinner at 5:15 and allow people to get their meal and be seated before starting the meeting. The combined co-chair meeting will go through 7:00 pm, followed by the steering division meetings.

The TSC will not convene a call on May 26th as it is Memorial Day in the US

Call adjourned at 12:04 pm ET

Agenda item list (our sand box for future meetings)

• Reaffirmation of v2xml standard
• out-of-cycle ballot criteria