HIMSS Health Story Project
The Health Story Project is a set of principles that guide the creation of education and content within the Interoperability and HIE Community. These principles encourage education and industry efforts to develop comprehensive electronic records that tell a patient's complete health story. Today, most electronic patient records and health information exchanges operate on a small percentage of the available information. The Health Story is dedicated to capturing a comprehensive understanding of the individual's data, experiences and preferences that can be shared to improve care through collaboration and analysis.
Our History
The Health Story Project began in 2006 as an alliance of healthcare vendors, providers and associations that pooled resources in a rapid-development initiative. In a span of three years, the Health Story Project produced eight Health Level Seven (HL7) data standards for the flow of information using common types of healthcare documents. Visit the following links to learn more.
Get Involved
Health Story Project Roundtables
The Health Story Project’s Roundtable series provides real-life success stories that are working to advance the patient story through the use of CDA document standards.
Most Recent Roundtable Session
This Roundtable presentation discussed mapping of C-CDA documents to the HL7 FHIR® standard.
Join the Interoperability & HIE Community to stay up to date on the Health Story Project and to take an active role to advance the patient's story.
- Advocate and build support for the Health Story Project
- Collaborate and network with Health Story Project supporters
- Engage with industry leaders on monthly meetings
- Participation in Health Story Roundtables is open to any HIMSS members at no additional cost
To join the Health Story Project discussions: Click the "Join the Community" button below to view your HIMSS Participations, then click “Edit Participations,” select “Interoperability & HIE Community,” and save your updated settings.
To learn more about the Health Story Project or to speak with a HIMSS staff member, please contact healthstory@himss.org
Health Story Project Driving Standards
HL7 Implementation Guide for CDA R2
This project designed a basic procedure note in XML as a constraint on HL7 version 3 Clinical Document Architecture Release 2. The note is basic enough to be used for all procedures and includes a sample note for endoscopy. To promote standardization and acceptance, it was closely modeled on the current HL7 CDA Operative Note. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and The Joint Commission (JCAHO) requirements, with specialty group input, was used to choose the contents. CMS and JCAHO, the primary regulators’, requirements dictated the minimum content standards. Implementer institutions were given opportunity for input as to compatibility with current/planned systems.
The Health Story Project collaborated with the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) with strong volunteer support from Oregon Health & Science University. Within HL7, the project was sponsored by the Structured Documents Work Group.
HL7/IHE Health Story Consolidation Project
The HL7/IHE Health Story Implementation Guide Consolidation Project is a collaboration of Health Level Seven (HL7) International, Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) and the Health Story Project. Working through the HL7 standards development organization, volunteers consolidated exchange standards for eight common types of clinical documents along with the HL7 Continuity of Care Document (CCD) standard into one comprehensive implementation package that establishes a foundation for health information exchange.
Through the consolidation and harmonization effort, the project addressed minor areas of ambiguity within the specific Standards Final Rule requirement to implement HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) Release 2, Continuity of Care Document according to HITSP C32.
ONC's Office of Standards and Interoperability (S&I) hosted the volunteer effort within its S&I Framework and facilitated the project through HL7 and IHE with support of its contractors. Consolidated CDA is a recommended standard for clinical documents in the proposed rule supporting Meaningful Use Stage 2.
Within HL7, the project was sponsored by the Structured Documents Work Group.