HL7 in Europe: United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Current Logo

Old Logo

Year of establishment

2000

Number of members

Current Chair

HL7 UK Chair, Ben McAlister

Ben is a Senior Solution Strategist at Cerner where he leads on industry engagement regarding interoperability standards and interoperability strategy in Europe across products. Other roles he holds include Associate Vice Chair of Standards for the British Computer Society (BCS) Health and Care Group, BCS representative on the British Standards Institute IST/35 Health Informatics Committee, HL7 UK representative on the Professional Records Standards Body Advisory Board, vendor representative on the INTEROPen Board and member of the IHE UK Steering Committee.

Joining Cerner in 2006, Ben spent much of his career working as a Software Architect in the area of reporting and analytics before moving focus to interoperability. Prior to joining Cerner, Ben worked at Homerton University Hospital Foundation Trust, working on the first deployment of Cerner's Millennium EHR in the UK, as a Service Development Manager for Planning and Commissioning and then as Information Manager.

Ben studied Medicine at Manchester University and Health Informatics at University College London.

Technical Lead

HL7 UK Technical Chair, Rik Smithies

working groups

Current working groups: UK Core FHIR Delivery Senior Leadership Team

Some highlights and major achievements - since establishment

Cooperation with government institutions

• NHS Digital
• NHSX
• NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS)
• National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)

Project Highlights

• 2010: Standard for Use of HL7 Version 2 in the UK (HL72UK)
• 2019: INTEROPen CareConnect FHIR Resource profiles (STU3)
• 2020: UK Core FHIR Implementation Guide, R4 in development

Events, e.g. IHIC

• HL7 UK bi-annual Interoperability Forums
• HL7 UK Training Course
• IHIC 2018 Mastering the Interoperability Challenge, Portsmouth, UK
• Jun 2019: Why FHIR makes a difference to your outcomes? Event with Grahame Grieve in collaboration with British Computer Society (BCS)
• Oct 2019: UK Mobilising Computable Biomedical Knowledge (MCBK) launch workshop, HL7 UK supported and steering committee member

Plans for the future?

• Promote use of FHIR Community Process in UK and develop refined UK FHIR Community Process and support UK FHIR Community in development of Implementation Guides
• Support development of UK Core FHIR Implementation Guide
• Support transition of any existing non FHIR Community Process Implementation Guides in use in UK to transition UK FHIR Community Process conformance