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 primary role of the PRS system is to enable provider identification to 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. The PRS XML Messaging specification is proprietary to the WHIC PRS solution. | 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 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. |