Evaluation of Health Level Seven (HL7) Standards Implementation in Egyptian Hospitals

Health information technology has entered the everyday workflow in a variety of healthcare providers with a certain degree of independence. This independence may be the cause of difficulty in interoperability and integration for shared Electronic Health Records (EHRs) which was overcome by a number of interoperability standards. Health Level Seven (HL7) is a standard for the interchange of data within the healthcare industry. Although the benefits of adopting HL7 are well known, only a few hospitals in Egypt have actually implemented it. This paper investigates the barriers and success factors of the three perspectives (environmental, managerial and technological) affecting positively and negatively on the implementation of HL7 standards in the Egyptian hospitals, and it presents recommendations which can be used by academics and practitioners to develop the implementation of HL7 standards. For the purpose of this study a questionnaire was developed and applied on the senior managers and decision makers of the information system in a sample of Egyptian hospitals. The study revealed that HL7 was implemented only in 18% of hospitals sample. Also, it identified the most important barriers facing the dissemination of HL7 implementation in healthcare sectors in Egypt which are unavailability of financing, lack of competition toward health data exchange, and low awareness of HL7 and its importance.