HL7 Announces New Advisory Council Members

Health Level Seven International (HL7), the global authority for interoperability in HIT with members in 55 countries, recently announced that its board of directors has named the following individuals to serve a two-year renewable term on the HL7 Advisory Council:

• Dixie Baker, PhD, MS, senior partner at Martin, Blanck & Associates, LLC;

• Paul Biondich, director of global health informatics program for Regenstrief Institute;

• Jennifer Covich Bordenick, CEO of eHealth Initiative;

• Susan Dentzer, senior health policy advisor for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation;

• John Halamka, MD, MS, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and cochair of Health IT Standards Committee;

• David McCallie, Jr., MD, vice president of medical informatics for Cerner Corporation;

• Blackford Middleton, MD, MPH, MSc, FACMI, a professor of biomedical informatics and medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and chair of AMIA;

• J. Marc Overhage, MD, PhD, chief medical informatics officer of Siemens Healthcare;

• Christopher Ross, MBA, CIO of Mayo Clinic;

• Mark Segal, PhD, vice president of government and industry affairs for GE Healthcare IT;

• Micky Tripathi, CEO and president of the Massachuttes eHealth Collaborative;

• Andrew Wiesenthal, MD, director of health care practice for Deloitte Consulting, LLP; and

• Mariann Yeager, CEO of Healtheway.

These individuals will join current HL7 Advisory Council members, including Russell Branzell, FCHIME, CHCIO, president and CEO of the College of Healthcare Information Executives; Carl Dvorak, president of Epic; Andrew Roddam, vice president and global head of epidemiology at GlaxoSmithKline; Mary Ann Slack, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research; Don Sweete, CEO of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization; John Tooker, MD, MBA, CEO emeritus of the American College of Physicians; and Jeremy Thorp, director of business architecture for the Health and Social Care Information Center.

“These leaders represent a broad spectrum of global stakeholders who are committed to advancing health through information technology. We are delighted to welcome them to the HL7 Advisory Council,” says Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD, CEO of HL7. “Their strategic expertise and diverse experience will contribute greatly to HL7’s goal of improving the quality of care and reducing costs by overcoming the barriers to interoperability.”

In recent years, HL7’s Advisory Council was instrumental in the organization’s decision to license its standards and implementation guides free of charge as well as the development of programs and services to address the needs of those who implement HL7 standards. The Advisory Council’s current focus is on addressing the recommendations from the ONC’s draft Interoperability Roadmap and the JASON Task Force, including the acceleration of the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard.

Source: Health Level Seven International