This guide focuses on the selection of messaging standards to support the in scope use cases. Due to differences in business requirements, the standards evaluation is broken into two sets of standardization requirements:
- Consumer messaging
- Source messaging
Consumer messaging
The A primary role of the PRS system Provider Registry is to enable provider identification to within consumer systems contributing data to or consuming data from provincial EHR solutions. The predominant means for exchanging data with the EHR is HL7 version 3 messaging.
Standard | Fit for Purpose | Stewardship | Quality | |||||
Fits | Implementation | Vendor Support | Canadian | SDO | Complexity | Standard | Training, Support and Tooling | |
AB MR2009 (HL7 v3) | Production | Yes (AB) | Localized by Alberta |
| High | |||
pan-Canadian MR2009 (HL7 v3) | Production in Canada | Yes | Localized by Infoway | High | ||||
PRS XML Messaging | Production | Yes | No | High | ||||
Architectural Constraints and Considerations | Secondary Benefits | |||||||
Use of HL7v3 conforms with the architectural design of Canada's digital health blueprint. AB MR2009 extends the Canadian specification with the ability to merge and logically delete providers. HL7v3 messaging does not provide the means to transmit a full version of the provider record including a history of changes to a provider records. The PRS XML Messaging specification is proprietary to the WHIC PRS solutionregistry solution but is shared across several provinces. | Standardizing on MR2009 across EHR applications reduces complexity within the infostructure and for implementers by minimizing variability in models and vocabulary. | |||||||
| Recommendation | Supporting Rationale | |||||||
| AB MR2009 (HL7 v3) | The AB MR2009 specification was designed to meet the in-scope use cases for PRS consumers and conforms with the architectural design of Canada's digital health blueprint. It extends the Canadian specification with the ability to merge and logically delete providers. | |||||||
Source messaging
Source messaging provides the means to transmit information from systems used at various licensing agencies, professional colleges, etc. to the PRS system. These systems are not typically EHR consumer systems.Provider Registry.
Standard | Fit for Purpose | Stewardship | Quality | ||||||
Fits | Implementation | Vendor Support | Canadian | SDO | Complexity | Standard | Training, Support and Tooling | ||
PRS XML Messaging | Production | Yes | No |
| High | ||||
| AB MR2009 (HL7 v3) | Production in Canada | Yes (AB) | Localized | by AlbertaHigh | |||||
pan-Canadian MR2009 (HL7 v3) | Production in Canada | Yes | Localized by Infoway | High | |||||
PRS XML Messaging | Production | Yes | No | High | |||||
Architectural Constraints and Considerations | Secondary Benefits | ||||||||
Source systems are not typically EHR consumer systems. Use of HL7v3 conforms with the architectural design of Canada's digital health blueprint. AB MR2009 extends the Canadian specification with the ability to merge and logically delete providers. HL7v3 messaging does not provide the means to transmit a full version of the provider record including a history of changes to a provider records. (UC-6) The PRS XML Messaging specification is proprietary to the WHIC PRS solution.registry solution but is shared across several provinces. | Standardizing on MR2009 across EHR applications reduces complexity within the infostructure and for implementers by minimizing variability in models and vocabulary. | ||||||||
| Recommendation | Supporting Rationale | ||||||||
| AB MR2009 (HL7 v3)PRS XML Messaging | The PRS XML specification was designed to meet the in-scope use cases for PRS consumers and conforms with the architectural design of Canada's digital health blueprintsource systems. Although the specification is proprietary to the specific provider registry solution used in Alberta it is relatively straightforward to implement. | ||||||||