Electronic Health Reporter

Health Level Seven (HL7) International, the global authority on interoperability of health information technology with members in 55 countries, announced election results for its board of directors at the 32nd Annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. The 2018 class of HL7 Fellows and the 2018 recipients of the W. Edward Hammond, Ph.D. volunteer of the year awards were also recognized at the event.

Incoming Board Chair

Walter Suarez, M.D., M.P.H., executive director, health IT strategy and policy, Kaiser Permanente, was selected by the membership to serve as the chair-elect in 2019 and as the board chair, 2020-2021.

HL7 Board Member Elections

Four members were elected to the HL7 board of directors for the 2019-2020 term:

• Secretary — Melva Peters, consultant, Jenaker Consulting and member, HL7 Canada
• Director — Kensaku Kawamoto, M.D., Ph.D., associate chief medical information officer, University of Utah Health Care
• Director — Janet Marchibroda, fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center
• Affiliate Director — Diego Kaminker, owner, Kern-IT SRL and member, HL7 Argentina

2018 HL7 Fellows

The HL7 Fellow Award was presented to five individuals during HL7’s 32nd Annual Plenary and Working Group Meeting in Baltimore. The award was established to recognize HL7 members with at least 15 years of active membership as well as outstanding service, commitment and contributions to HL7. The 2018 recipients of the HL7 Fellowship Award include:

• David Hay, M.D.
• Beat Heggli
• Patrick Lloyd
• Rob McClure, M.D.
• Corey Spears

HL7 Volunteers of the Year

HL7 honored three members with the 22^nd annual W. Edward Hammond, Ph.D. Volunteer of the Year Award. Established in 1997, the award is named after Dr. Ed Hammond, one of HL7’s most active volunteers and a founding member as well as past board chair. The award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to HL7’s success. The 2018 recipients include:

• Brett Marquard, principal, WaveOne Associates, Inc.
• Ulrike Merrick, lead specialist, informatics terminology, APHL – Association of Public Health Laboratories and public health information specialist, Vernetzt, LLC
• Bryn Rhodes, owner, Database Consulting Group and chief technology officer, HarmonIQ Health Systems Corporation

About the Volunteers:

Brett Marquard, has been a member of HL7 since 2008. Brett has held several positions throughout his 10-year tenure at the organization. For seven years, he co-chaired the HL7 Structured Documents Work Group. In addition, Marquard has served as the vice chair of the HL7 US Realm Steering Committee since 2016 and has chaired the newly established CDA Management Group since 2017. He is active in the effort to advance HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR^®) and works with the ONC within the context of addressing their HL7 requests. Finally, Marquard been instrumental in the standards development process as the primary editor of the Consolidated CDA (C-CDA) and US FHIR Core implementation guides.

Ulrike Merrick, has been an active member of HL7 since 2008. She has served as a co-chair of the Orders and Observations Work Group since 2014 and was recently appointed to HL7’s newly established Version 2 Management Group. In addition, Merrick was elected to serve on the HL7 Technical Steering Committee beginning in January 2019 as the co-chair of the Administrative Steering Division. Much of her involvement in HL7 is focused on lab testing and reporting, and she has used her background in this area to engage the CDC in HL7 initiatives. Merrick has leveraged her broad network in the laboratory community to provide input from subject matter experts in relevant HL7 specifications, such as the HL7 Specimen Domain Analysis Model.

Bryn Rhodes, has participated in HL7 for several years and joined as a member in 2018. He serves as an interim co-chair of the Clinical Decision Support Work Group. Rhodes has also been involved in the efforts to extend HL7 FHIR into the clinical decision support and clinical quality measurement domains. He is the co-author of several HL7 specifications including the following: Clinical Quality Language (CQL), FHIRPath, FHIR Clinical Reasoning Module, QI Core/Quick and the CQL-based HQMF. In addition, Rhodes oversaw the transfer of the CMS electronic quality measure (eCQM) work using the CQL across multiple measure developers. Finally, he was instrumental in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Adapting Clinical Guidelines for the Digital Age project’s incorporation of FHIR clinical reasoning and FHIR resources into the CDS L3 output and operationalizing the process by use in a CDC opioid management clinical guide.