We're back

After a long sabatical, Mikey is back and MITA blogging once again and I have news from friends at the HL7 work group meeting in San Antonio.

The good news is that it looks like the MITA Information Architecture is going to get a well-needed boost from the newly-formed HL7 MITA Project work group!

Day one at the work group meeting was spent getting oriented with the HL7 process and procedures and members of the group getting to know each other. The HL7 MITA project is a step child of the HL7 Financial Management (FM) group and they have provided solid support for the HL7 MITA Project team.

The HL7 MITA Project is a nice mix of State folks and representatives from the vendor community and CMS even sent a few government types down there to make sure that the project team didn't have too much fun. Day 2 was spent learning about the relationship of HL7 to MITA and a discussion about how MITA will benefit from the work that has already been done within HL7 in terms of the Reference Information Model (RIM).

The emphasis of day three was on business cases, the RIM and how to model MITA business services. Tomorrow, day 4 will be focused on planning and how work on the MITA Information Model will progress over the next 3 months. Some good websites to check out, related to today's activities include the following:

http://hl7projects.hl7.nscee.edu/projects/mita/

http://mita.wikispaces.com/

The takeaway so far from this work group meeting seems to be that there are many very smart people who believe strongly in the concept of interoperability and are willing to graciously lend thier time and talent to the MITA effort. If you think that MITA is a fad or a flash in the pan, perhaps you should think again...