Clinical Interoperability Council

Clinical Interoperability Council SWOT Analysis

Strengths: • Non-technical forum to support clinical use cases and work products (only such forum) • Part of HL7 • Support and endorsement from AHIMA, CDISC, and other key industry groups • Initial vision of standardizing clinical data in a way that supports primary and secondary uses of healthcare data, i.e. a large and encompassing vision to collect once, repurpose many times for clinical care, research, performance measurement, population health, etc.) • Engagement and support of HL7 leadership • Large following for such a new group

Opportunities: • Engage all medical professional societies and other health related stakeholders (include broader classification of stakeholders, e.g., LTC professionals, nursing) in HL7, in solving multi-national problems • Overcome disparities by engaging stakeholders in efforts to harmonize disparate systems and improve consistency of data (i.e., defining data to improve semantic/syntactic interoperability between clinical and secondary systems) • Fills an unmet need in HL7 (i.e. clinical content) • Mechanism for clinical input into HL7 without enduring the technical indoctrination. • Coordinate HL7 functional and interoperability standards in support of standards and certification (needs to be broader; look at modular functionality – clinical system functionality) • The CIC is gaining some recognition but needs to follow with substance or it will lose momentum • Leverage the growing momentum for engagement in this new group focused on clinical requirements.

Weaknesses: • Volunteer led causing only partial attention. A project of this magnitude may require a full-time program manager. • Resources do not commiserate with the job • Lack of contacts and influence in other significant standards development groups. • New workgroup within HL7; this formative stage causes a feeling of chaos and uncertainty. • Within HL7, there is a perception that CIC is new, inexperienced, not mainstream, and a pet project

Updated Draft – July 17, 2008 Threats: • Inability to effectively communicate an engaging purpose to the clinical community • Disparate work is occurring in different groups • Unclear how efforts will be funded to support CIC workgroup activities (e.g., modelers, etc.) • The CIC is a large mass to hold together; the potential for fragmentation is high. • Potential overlap with the CIC and the Detailed Clinical Models (DCM) project. • Management of the content generated (including identification of who, how, what tools, etc.) may cause factions to deadlock, delaying overall CIC project objectives.

Updated Draft – July 17, 2008