COPENHAGEN, Denmark – The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation and Health Level Seven will work together on "common, timely health informatics standards."

HL7 is a global healthcare IT standards group made up of more than 500 corporate members representing 90 percent of the IT systems in the healthcare industry. IHTSDO encourages the use of standardized terminologies in healthcare - particularly, SNOMED CT.

Under the agreement, the two bodies will aim to expand on their existing involvement in the Joint Initiative on SDO Global Health Informatics Standardization. The Joint Initiative was established to push interoperability by coordinating standards.

The announcement of further collaboration between HL7 and IHTSDO was announced April 5 at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, U.S.

"While HL7 and SNOMED have worked together for several years, their collaboration was informal and without oversight. As a result, the independently developed standards were not harmonized and often were not easily integrated," said Bob Dolin, MD, HL7's chair-elect. "Coordinating the efforts of these two leading standards groups at the start rather than at the end of the standards development process is a major step forward in the industry's goal of seamless interoperability."

"Stronger links between standards development organizations will provide an improved service to both health authorities and healthcare system implementers," said John Gutai, IHTSDO's chief technical architect. Gutai also noted that better coordination between the groups can reduce overlaps and gaps between various standards.