HL7 stands for Health Level Seven and it is a standards developing organization that is widely used in the health care industry both in the US and internationally.  It is the language that hospitals, doctor’s offices, labs, etc… speak and how they exchange data.  Many agencies are required or requested to send their EMS transport data to the receiving hospital in this format.  The HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is a brand new standard that has been finalized through the HL7 balloting process and was released for trial use in early 2012.

 ZOLL intends to adopt this standard and develop an HL7 data extract that can be used with any HL7 compliant hospital vendor that can consume this file.  It includes:

• Basic Trip Data
• Patient Info
• Impressions
• Assessment Info
• Medications and Procedures provided

ZOLL started development of this standard, for data exchange between EMS system and a hospital system, in November 2012.  We are working in partnership with the NEMSIS Technical Assistance Center (TAC), who developed NEMSIS version 3 with HL7 compatibility in mind, and several of our customers.

Recognizing that many local EMS agencies have an increasing need to communicate electronically with their affiliated health care organizations, ZOLL’s development of an HL7 standard data exchange method is a high priority for ZOLL and will be an important focus for us over the coming months and years.