[HL7 standard--features, principles, and methodology].

The mission of HL7 Inc. non-profit organization is to provide standards for the exchange, management and integration of data that support clinical patient care, and the management, delivery and evaluation of healthcare services. As the standards developed by HL7 Inc. represent the world's most influential standardization efforts in the field of medical informatics, the HL7 family of standards has been recognized by the technical and scientific community as the foundation for the next generation healthcare information systems. Versions 1 and 2 of HL7 standard have solved many issues, but also demonstrated the size and complexity of health information sharing problem. As the solution complete new methodology has been adopted that is encompassed in the HL7 Version 3 recommendations. This approach standardizes Reference Information Model (RIM), which is the source of all derived domain models and message structures. Message design is now defined in detail, enabling interoperability between loosely coupled systems that are.designed by different vendors and deployed in various environments. At the start of the Primary Healthcare Information System project in the Republic of Croatia in 2002, the decision was to go directly to Version 3. The target scope of work includes clinical, financial and administrative data management in the domain of healthcare processes. By using HL7v3 standardized methodology we were able to completely map the Croatian primary healthcare domain to HL7v3 artefacts. Further refinement processes that are planned for the future will provide semantic interoperability and detailed description of all elements in HL7 messages. Our HL7 Business Component is in constant process of studying different legacy applications, making solid foundation for their integration to HL7-enabled communication environment.