As the award was presented to Sysmex New Zealand Sales Director Colin McKenzie by HL7 New Zealand Chair and Co-Chair of the HL7 International Council Peter Jordan, details about Sysmex New Zealand’s contribution to the adoption of HL7 standards in New Zealand were relayed by Greg Ward, conference MC.

“HL7 standards have been used in New Zealand for 25 years and throughout that period Sysmex New Zealand has consistently implemented these standards in their products, evangelised HL7 standards in the broader digital health community and offered continuous support for the local HL7 affiliate, known since 2004 as HL7 New Zealand.”

Sysmex New Zealand’s support of HL7 standards and HL7 New Zealand involves a team of highly skilled and knowledgeable individuals working continuously behind the scenes. Each passionately advocates that our products communicate with each other as well as with other health IT systems used in New Zealand and overseas. This steadfast support also includes two staff members sitting on the HL7 New Zealand board. Sysmex New Zealand Chief Architect Graeme Hibbert has served for four years, having just stepped down this year, and Senior Software Consultant David Fallas has served since the inception of HL7 New Zealand.

Advancements in the sharing of health data between disparate information systems is a major focus for Sysmex New Zealand and aligns with the Ministry of Health’s 2016 New Zealand Health Strategy for ‘all New Zealanders to live well, stay well and get well’. The easier exchange of health information is critical to the success of this vision, as is the necessity for interoperability to ensure open access to healthcare providers and patients.

Sysmex New Zealand has led the way with numerous initiatives in support of this vision over the last 25 years, including development of the Delphic laboratory information system to enable laboratories to send high quality, standardised and secure health information as HL7 messages, facilitating reporting to practice management systems, hospital systems and national registries, as well as the expansion of regional Eclair clinical data repositories, incorporating diagnostic and clinical data from an increasing number of external systems to provide a more complete patient record.

Looking to the future, Sysmex New Zealand is focused on continuing development with the next generation of messaging via HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). This standard created by HL7 International describes data formats, elements and an application programming interface for exchanging elect