Brisbane turned on a late autumn stunner for an HL7 Australia meeting that Pulse+IT attended in the Queensland capital this week to hear all about the localised pathology and referral messaging standard that has been published by HL7 Australia. The turnout was pretty good too considering the esoteric nature of the meeting, which covered all things HL7 v2, along with FHIR, PITUS, NCTS, NCSR, NPAAC and other acronym allsorts.

The expert crowd smiled knowingly when mention was made of previous attempts at developing standards that would miraculously bring interoperability to secure messaging over the years. Jared Davison, the chief technology officer of secure messaging vendor Medical-Objects, began his presentation with a slide from back in 2007 that could easily be used today, and pathology informatics expert Michael Legg went even further back when he mentioned there'd been a mention of standards in Hammurabi's code back in 1754 BCE.