1. HL7 Tooling—A Progress Report
John Quinn
HL7 CTO
HL7 Board Retreat; Asheville, NC
July 31, 2008

2. Two Goal Areas Two Separate but Related set of Requirements:
Ballot/Publishing: RIM artifact based standards and Implementation Guides first, all products when complete.
“Use” of RIM based standards (or the “other half” of the HDF)
July 31, 2008

3. Priority Both are important Risks are different to HL7
Ballot/Publication the most immediate risk to the continued publication of normative editions
Lack of “use” tools has been repeatedly identified as a barrier to the adoption of RIM-based Standards.
July 31, 2008

4. Publication

5. Critical Issues
Publication content is prepared on personal systems within WG
Quality review and harmonization of static model definitions across WGs:
occurs semi-manually at the submitter (WG) level;
thus, before publication, specifications must undergo an iterative review and correction process for cross-WG concerns
July 31, 2008

6. Current Publication Process
July 31, 2008

7. Future Publication Process
July 31, 2008

8. Current Capabilities (and some resulting issues)
HL7 is publishing an increasing scope, volume and variety of specifications in each of 3 development ballot cycles plus, other approved ballot cycles and one normative edition
Balloting process is web based, permitting global participation
V3 specification development and publishing is supported by tooling designed to minimize design errors by authors
July 31, 2008

9. Current Capabilities (and some resulting issues)
Specifications may include V3 artifacts intended to be input into automated processes as part of normative standards
Many implementers across the globe are taking advantage of V3 artifacts to produce implementation guides, test cases, validation process input or as initial design artifacts for their own software development
July 31, 2008

10. Publication Issues
Increased scope and volume of the normative edition is stressing capacity of staff support
Different specification preparation processes are followed within work groups depending on group preferences and volunteer skills/time available
July 31, 2008

11. Publication Issues
The specification content structure has become inconsistent across specifications over time, particularly for content prepared as text documents
Text editing for content expressed in XML files lacks a good WYSIWYG editor, leading to inconsistent representation
There is little automated publication quality assurance tooling available to work groups prior to publication processing
July 31, 2008

12. Publication Issues
Significant authoring time/skill is required to produce specification artifacts that could be automated
Version management of interdependent artifacts and specification content is difficult over time and across specifications
There are performance issues that negatively impact the publication production process
There will be further response issues if we increase the use of web based applications.
July 31, 2008

13. Publication Issues
Tool support and publication production rely on diminishing volunteer time/skills which increases quality risks and publication delays
V3 Ballot becoming unwieldy for reviewers and requests received for Domain or Topic “views” with all dependent sections included, capable of being printed
Cross specification completeness and quality checks desired
July 31, 2008

14. Publication Issues
Template Authoring (e.g., CDA IGs) adds additional static model constraints to those currently used when designing static models which will require new authoring capabilities to capture required rules
July 31, 2008

15. Tools Today (by Product Life Cycle Process Step)
Current Ballot Production and Publishing Process
Project Approval
Word – scope statement
Project Initiation
Word - project plan
Project Insight – register project
Requirements Analysis
Standard UML tools; Rational Modeling suite - class diagrams, activity diagrams, state diagrams
Word – requirements glossary, business rules and vocabulary definitions
July 31, 2008

16. Tools Today (by Product Life Cycle Process Step)
Current Ballot Production and Publishing Process (cont.)
Logical Design—V3 Messages
RMIM Designer – static models
Publication Database – dynamic models, explanatory text
V3 Schema Generator – XML and MIF schemas
RoseTree – HMDs
Logical Design—V3 Foundation
Rational Rose - RIM
Vocabulary Harmonization Submission - Vocabulary
RoseTree – RIM, Vocabulary
XML Authoring - Abstract DataTypes
Web-based OID registry – OIDs
July 31, 2008

17. Tools Today (by Product Life Cycle Process Step)
Current Ballot Production and Publishing Process (cont.)
Draft Specification
V2 Specification
Word Template
V3 Specification
RMIM Designer
Publications Database, Description Editor – explanatory text, model annotations
Publishing Widget - Publications Database extract
V3 Schema Generator – XML transforms to CSV, HTML, XSD, MIF formats
Excel – macros produce HMD table view from CSV
July 31, 2008

18. Tools Today (by Product Life Cycle Process Step)
Current Ballot Production and Publishing Process (cont.)
Draft Specification
EHR Functional Model
Word
CCOW
Arden Syntax
July 31, 2008

19. Tools Today (by Product Life Cycle Process Step)
Current Ballot Production and Publishing Process (cont.)
Ballot Publication
V3 Specifications Ballot Site
Ballot publishing XML transform process – ballot directory, indexing and linking HTML to form V3 Ballot Site
Similar process to produce V3 Normative addition with resulting version identification added
WinZip – package downloads
V2, EHR Functional Model, CCOW Specifications
Word
PDF transform – PDF format
July 31, 2008

20. V3/RIM-Based Ballot Publication
The primary reason HL7 has developed proprietary tooling is:
To be able to enforce HL7 design methodology and rules as artifacts and supporting text are authored.
There is a consistent tension between the trade-offs of quality and familiarity when developing tools.
Since V3 intends to encourage consistency of design across domains and topics and has a RIM as a unifying mechanism, any tools that replace those that HL7 is currently dependent on must increase coherence and consistency, while increasing productivity of authors and editors by increasing ease of use.
July 31, 2008

21. Future Publication Process
July 31, 2008

22. Future Publication Process
The major difference between the current and proposed process:
Increase the quality of specifications by centralizing specification design artifacts and explanatory text in a robust source control environment.
Automate quality checks both within and across domains that can be run iteratively as specifications are developed and any discrepancies reported to appropriate work groups until all automated checks have passed.
Then (and only then) are the draft specifications submitted for the integrated ballot and publishing production.
July 31, 2008

23. Future Process Pre-requisites
Develop detailed processes and agree to:
Change tracking bug report tracking
Design tools for both static and dynamic models with output in XML
Standardize specification structure for all specification types
Author all specification source text in XML format
Select XML authoring tools that provide familiar WYSIWYG formatting features and spell check
July 31, 2008

24. Future Process Pre-requisites
Develop detailed processes and agree to (cont):
Agree on automated quality criteria
Develop quality checks (processes and automation)
Put in place conversion processes to transform existing content to new formats
Train modeling, vocabulary and publishing facilitators in new tools and processes
Agree to specification formatting styles and develop style sheets for them
Confirm the design and plan for an infrastructure capable of running increased volumes without performance degradation.
July 31, 2008

25. Opportunities
IBM sponsored licenses of Rational Modeling Suite for use by HL7 volunteers supporting requirements analysis and documentation
Open Health Tools (OHT) has current and proposed projects that provide opportunities to collaborate to produce appropriate tooling:
NHS sponsored Static Model Designer Project will produce a replacement for the RMIM Designer
IHTSDO sponsored SNOMED CT terminology work bench will produce tools likely to be of use in managing HL7 vocabulary as well
July 31, 2008

26. Opportunities
IBM/VA sponsored UML Modeling Tools intends to produce tools based on Eclipse foundation that use a familiar UML notation but enforce HL7 Static Model Constraint rules, with enhancements to automate more types of constraints using current Object Constraint Language and emerging OMG Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR)
OHT has identified a potential project to jointly sponsor with HL7, IBM and IHTSDO, an opportunity to leverage publishing tools based on DITA (a “Topic Map” based standard for consistent publishing of both human readable documentation and machine readable artifacts) for which external funding may become available
July 31, 2008

27. Opportunities
Explore with the NHS opportunities to leverage tools developed to support NHS implementation guide production, especially those used to support MIF based static model annotations, model difference comparisons, dynamic model design and presentation, and template design as well as XML processes used for quality checking
Revisit existing MOU with UNLV to confirm continued infrastructure support or consider alternatives
Consider tooling required to support SOA specifi-cation development and include in tooling plans
July 31, 2008

28. Opportunities
Consider investing in increased tooling training for modeling, vocabulary and publishing facilitators, with an emphasis on editors of current specifications that are not XML based
Explore conversion strategies to convert existing Word specifications into XML format and using XSLT transforms to ready them into a new integrated DITA based structure
July 31, 2008