Quality Criteria
Standard quality criteria relate to the overall calibre of the standard not the standard content itself. They measure the level of interoperability, adaptability, and stability provided by the standard as well as the availability of supporting resources such as training, implementation guides, and software to support development, conformance testing, and maintenance of the standard.
Implementation Support and Education
Services which support implementers may help increase the rate of adoption and/or decrease the implementation and ownership costs for projects who would otherwise have to provide support services to adopters directly. These services may be provided by the custodian or service providers for a fee or free of charge.
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- Does the standard’s custodian provide direct support to implementers? Do others? At what cost?
- Is it easy to obtain education and/or training on the standard and supporting tools?
- Is the education or training offered in multiple formats (online training modules, books, in person, etc.)?
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Enables Interoperability
Existing and new clinical solutions will need to exchange information in a seamless manner. Standards which are complementary to – or strategically positioned to work with – existing interoperability standards implementations may offer greater flexibility or long term benefit.
(Note that greater flexibility can also increase solution complexity. It is important to consider how different components of an integrated solution will interoperate with one another and requirements for supporting services when evaluating this criterion.)
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- Is the standard backwards compatible? (E.g. can implementers of previous versions keep their applications in tact in order to be compatible with a newer version?)
- Does the standard have the ability to map to other terminology and classification standards?
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Implementation and Maintenance Tools
The existence of tools and code libraries that are easily accessible or commercially available can reduce the effort and cost required to implement and maintain a particular standard.
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- Are there any existing code libraries and examples available to support implementers or would it be necessary to write all base level code from scratch?
- Are there standard design tools to help implementers extend or constrain the standard? Are the standard design tools stable and usable?
- Do the tools run on different operating systems?
- Are there tools that help implementers easily recognize differences between versions of the standard and/or localizations?
- Are there any application program interfaces or development sandboxes for implementers?
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Conformance criteria and profiles are used to test whether a standard has been implemented correctly. Process to measure solution conformance may already be in place and available to support the project.
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- Are there conformance testing tools that first time implementers can easily access?
- Can implementers re-use their conformance testing environments and processes?
- Is there a vendor certification process in place?
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Stability
Standards which are stable and widely implemented are more attractive for other implementers to adopt. Less mature standards may be more volatile and fragile.
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- Has the standard been implemented and tested previously?
- Has the standard already been implemented by the project’s implementers?
- Is the standard stable or is it in a draft status and subject to change?
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Adaptability
Different standards allow implementers different levels of flexibility to make modifications to support local needs.
(Note that greater flexibility can also increase solution complexity. It is important to consider how different components of an integrated solution will interoperate with one another and requirements for supporting services when evaluating this criterion.)
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- Is the standard highly flexible with lots of optionality and minimal cardinality constraints?
- Is the standard very strict with little to no optionality and strict cardinality constraints?
- Does the standard custodian have defined processes and tools for registering local extensions?
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