Tuesday, September 04, 2012

HL7: Open Standard

Monumental news this morning - the HL7 standard for healthcare messaging is becoming a much more free and open standard, providing standards and IP at no cost to implementers. I started to suspect this was in the works when Graham Grieve negotiated with HL7 to make the HL7 FHIR standard available at no cost for the draft edition, and then "we'll see about the normative edition". The discussions to make this happen go back at least two years, but of course this has been a common complaint about HL7, that cost of IP may be an impediment to implementation.

Not entirely sure I agree with that, since I see evidence suggesting this has not happened; however, for new initiatives like FHIR to gain traction on smaller local projects, and in particular in the growing area of mobile health, any such impediments need to be lowered.

I love working with HL7 and I love working with the members of both HL7 International and HL7 Canada/ Canada Health Infoway, and I have to say, this is truly fantastic news.

Keith Boone's post

Saturday, September 01, 2012

The real honeypot is in the Google Docs link...

Piers Hollott shared Keith Boone's post with you.
Wow! This is some radical transparency... Including Meaningful Use Common Data Sets
Keith Boone
The real honeypot is in the Google Docs link...
Healthcare Standards: Stage2 Final Rule Crosswalk from MeaningfulUse Objectives to Standards
Last time around, I put together a crosswalk from Objectives to Certification, and from Certification to Standards. This time, it's all in one spreadsheet. Sorry for the tiny type, it's quite a bit of...
View or comment on Piers Hollott's post »

My Review of Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS, 2nd Edition


Great intro to key web technologies
By phollott from Vancouver Island, BC on 9/1/2012


4out of 5
Pros: Easy to understand, Clear
Best Uses: Intermediate
Describe Yourself: Developer
I recently read two books from O'Reilly Books dealing with JavaScript: "Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS" and "Learning JavaScript Design Patterns" by Addy Osmani. The first book is a great introduction to four often essential technologies for getting things done on the web - I only wish this book covered managing XSLT using Sablotron in PHP 5.0 in more depth, but this is due to personal bias - in a past life, I built some cool things using these 5 technologies.

The design patterns book was also a very good read, though, I used it more of a refresher of design patterns in general - the patterns in this book were for the most part based on the standard Java design patterns, covering some of the nuances of classical vs. prototypal inheritance.

But let's face it, Object-based Development using JavaScript is obscure subject matter, and Osmani's book has some really indispensable advice: see how these patterns are applied within the JQuery library, which contains the best application of JavaScript Design Patterns you will find. This is truly great advice.

Which brings me circuitously to JQuery creator John Resig, for whom I have immense respect; and his latest foray into simplifying JavaScript to make it easier to use as a readily available first language, which I endorse completely. One thing I appreciated in "Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS"... no semicolons!

Heresy!

But really, as long as you put separate statements on separate lines, there are virtually no situations where semicolons are essential. And in fact, I found the example code in Robin Nixon's book Much easier to read than the example code in Osmani's book. I may just have been converted to the darkside.

I highly recommend both of these books.