long awaited HL 7 model to be released

Ever since the HL7 EHR technical committee formed the PHR working group in Feb 2005 ( 3years ago!) , the medical IT world has anxiously awaited their recs..it is interesting that the market and industry sped right past the committee, developing projects and initiatives and not waiting for adopted defined standards. The committee must have watched all of this happen at lightening speed and somehow hoped they would get these out as soon as possible. If they waited much longer..who knows.., the market would have reached the same complete chaos that the EMR market created for itself with development of many independent projects with no interoperability standards. Emr's are now struggling to retrofit to defined standards that should have been implemented 15 years ago. Anyways, finally, it is here..

Health level seven (HL7), has approved the Personal Health Record systme functional model (PHR-S FM) as a draft standard for trial use (DSTU).

I applaud the approval and intent, but wonder "what took so long?"

The PHR-S FM is not a fully American National Standards Institute accredited standard and this will take up to 2 more years to be revised from a draft to a standard...this will most likely be the first industry standard to specify functionality for PHR systems.

Clearly there are stakeholders that are involved and now pushing this initiative "front and center", hopefully the "stakeholders" are not competing for commercial profits but rather for consumer benefits, privacy and rights...