Rene Spronk had a great post on the HL7 Affiliate Life Cycle a few weeks back. Yesterday Catherine Chronaki displayed a simple slide based on that model at the HL7 Working Group meeting. While Rene talks about it from an HL7 Perspective, I think about it from a national perspective. There are essentially five levels in Rene's model: Raising Awareness Creating Consensus Based Localization Paid Development Official Endorsement Standards Collaborative So far, only Canada is at level 5. The US through Meaningful Use is sort of at level 4 for endorsement of HL7 standards, and the ONC S&I Framework is certainly a level 2 activity, if not officially acting as an HL7 Affiliate. The S&I Framework contracts (there are at least 10) will eventually end. There are a lot of activities which have produced outputs that still need maintenance (e.g., the Clinical Element Data Dictionary). One of the tasks for the S&I Framework is to establish a long term...