Health Level 7

Health Level 7 (HL7) is a group of international standards that facilitate the exchange of data between computer systems used by healthcare organizations. The term HL7 is used to refer to both the organization responsible for developing and supporting these standards, as well as to the versions 2.x and 3 of the standards, along with other standards developed by local HL7 organizations across more than 35 countries. The number 7 in the HL7 name corresponds to layer 7 of the ISO/OSI reference model for communication (ISO7498-1), signifying that the standard specifies communication at the application level.