The Health Level Seven (HL7) organization (See: http:// www.HL7.org) was first  formed in March 1987 to develop message formats for within institution messaging. Its first standard (Application Protocol for Electronic Data Exchange in Healthcare Environments v 1.0) was published in October 1987 with the subsequent versions dates: 2.0 September 1988;2.1 in June 1990, 2.3 in June 1997 and 2.4 in Sept 2000. HL7’s domain of interest is clinical and administrative messaging in healthcare. As an ANSI approved Standards Developer Organization it develops voluntary consensus standards in Health Informatics and is an SDO member of the ANSI Health Informatics Standards Board. HL7 has 14 Technical committees and 14 Special Interest Groups. In addition to its Application Specification, it has an Arden Syntax for Medical Logic Systems Specification and a Clinical Context Management Specification. Consult its site at http://www.hl7.org .