Health Level Seven (usually abbreviated HL7) version 2 is a standard for interaction between (and within) healthcare systems and data exchange developed by Health Level Seven International. It is actually only one of several standards developed by HL7, but it is one of the most well-known, and most ubiquitous. This means, among other things, that a working knowledge of HL7 version 2 is a crucial skill for HIT professionals. It continues to be updated, with the most recent version being 2.8. Some other HL7 standards you may have heard of are version 3, the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), and FHIR. In HL7 version 2 (and version 3) systems interact by exchanging messages. By contrast, CDA is an architecture for representing clinical documents (such as…