HL7 Canada Council

Health Level Seven (HL7) Standards in Canada are regulated through an international agreement with HL7 International Inc., co-owners of the intellectual property. Under the HL7 Affiliate Agreement, Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) is the legal signatory authority and host of HL7 Canada.

As per the Affiliates agreement, the HL7 Canada Council is responsible for voting on HL7 technical and administrative ballots and board positions.

Additionally, the HL7 Canada Council is responsible for:

Promoting and supporting the use of HL7 related pan-Canadian health information standards.
Promoting and supporting the domestic and international harmonization of HL7 standards to enable the sharing of health information in Canada.
Ensuring that consensus positions, advice and decisions are reached with appropriate consultation and in an open, transparent and accountable manner without a preponderance of influence by any one stakeholder group.

Compositions and Elections:

The membership of the HL7 Canada Council serves a term of two years, after which an election shall be held. An elected member can be re-elected for an unlimited number of terms. The nomination period will commence every year in mid January. Each year there will be two Member at Large positions open for election, one for a public sector representative and one for a private sector representative. Every two years, there will be an election for the HL7 Canada Affiliate Chair position.

Role	Process of Election	Number of Seats
HL7 Canada Affiliate Chair	Elected by the HL7 Canada Community	1
Infoway Representative	Appointed by Infoway	1
HL7 Canada Members at Large	Elected by the HL7 Canada Community	4

Nominations

Eligible candidates may be nominated or may choose to self-nominate during the designated nomination period, by:

completing and uploading a Nomination Form in the HL7 Community Documents (designated folder) and
posting a reply to the Elections forum post alerting the HL7 Community of the official submission.

When the nomination period closes, all submissions will be consolidated by Infoway in preparation for balloting.

Voting

Voting is hosted on InfoCentral. Each member of the HL7 Canada InfoCentral community is entitled to submit a single, confidential vote for each of the candidate positions across the community/stakeholder groups represented. If there is only one candidate for a position, a vote will not be necessary, and the candidate will be appointed to the HL7 Canada Council. The successful candidates will be selected by simple majority.

The elected Council will be announced in the HL7 Canada Community via a forum post.

Ballots: HL7 Canada Voting Members

The HL7 Canada Council is responsible for voting on HL7 technical and administrative ballots and board positions.

As per the Affiliates agreement, the total number of voting members is determined by the number of paid HL7 Canada members (number of seats equals 10 per cent of total dues). Currently HL7 Canada has four votes on international ballots, based on the HL7 Canada Affiliate membership.

The voting positions are determined in the following manner:

HL7 Affiliate Chair holds one vote
The Infoway representative holds one vote
The two remaining voters are elected annually by the HL7 Canada council and ideally include a newly elected HL7 Canada Council member, as well as a member who is partway through their two-year term.

Standards Access

To access licensed international and national health information standards (e.g. SNOMED CT), simply login to your Infoway Account and reconfirm acceptance of the Terms of Use and License Agreements annually. Fees are only collected for access and use of HL7 International materials.

All SNOMED CT, LOINC and Infoway software tools are available at no cost to users with an active Infoway account. Information provided during Infoway Account registration may be used to respect our contractual commitments with licensors such as HL7 International and SNOMED International, or to request feedback on artifacts downloaded via Terminology Gateway or Terminology API. Email us to opt out from receiving feedback emails of terminology downloads from the maintaining organization.