HL7®

Health Level Seven International is a standards-developing organization that provides a framework and international standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information (including clinical and administrative data) that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery, and evaluation of health services. These standards for transfer of data between health care software applications focus on the application layer, which is "layer 7" in the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model), a conceptual model that characterizes and standardizes the communication functions of a telecommunication or computing system without regard to its underlying internal structure and technology.