“Implementation guides for documents containing ‘history and physical reports’ were submitted Monday to Ann Arbor, Mich.-based HL7. It is the first ballot in what is expected to be a series of interoperability specifications under a project called Clinical Document Architecture for Common Document Types, or CDA4CDT.

Standards development expert Liora Alschuler, the CDA4CDT project leader, said balloting is the least of the worries ahead.

“The first challenge is to get this adopted,” Alschuler said. “We have high hopes that this will see relatively rapid, widespread adoption because it has a really minimal impact on workflow.

“So what does that do for humanity? If we look at building interoperability and patient-centered records, this is the largest single gain in interoperability that the industry could see,” Alschuler said.