and help to Swedish views on the general HL7 developments can be advanced to the international organization. HL7 Sweden offers a forum for cooperation for discussion and education HL7 Sweden intends to work closely with the SIS, which is the official national standards organization that has the mandate to publish the For more information on HL7 Sweden contact gustav.alvfeldt @ sll.se. Turkey In Turkey, the HL7 affiliate operates as an autonomous subgroup of the Turkish Medical Informatics Association (TURKMIA). Affiliate members are admitted once they have passed certain prerequisite studies. HL7 Turkey has been focusing a good deal of effort in the past year on raising the country's awareness of HL7, with the result that HL7 is (unofficially) the standard for Turkish healthcare informatics projects. HL7 Turkey has worked closely with the Turkish Ministry of Health IT Department in order to insure that the following areas would benefit from the HL7 standard: National Health Information System (NHIS) components Hospital Information Systems Family Physician Information Systems. United Kingdom HL7 UK is the UK affiliate organisation to HL7, and was set up in January 2000. The mission of HL7 UK is entirely complementary with that of the parent HL7 organisation: HL7 UK sets out to: educate the UK healthcare community and healthcare information system developers about HL7 standards, and promote effective and consistent implementation of HL7 standards in the UK. identify and analyse UK healthcare business requirements for electronic communication of healthcare information. match UK national requirement with HL7 messages, and if necessary, identifying the need for UK specific messages, profiles and implementation guides. report to HL7 on any specific UK needs that are not met by existing HL7 standards. prototype and pilot with clinical and business validation. HL7 UK seeks to identify HL7 standards that are applicable to UK healthcare without change and those that require adaptations or national implementation guidelines to meet UK requirements. Where UK adaptations, profiles or guidelines are required, HL7 UK proposes solutions that meet the need for consistent national implementation, while avoiding unnecessary divergence from HL7 standards. To this end, HL7 UK feeds back national requirements and proposed solutions to its parent body. Switzerland HL7 version 2 is used by almost all Swiss hospitals. Their HL7 v3 CDA implementation guide covers all documents needed to support the "hip replacement" clinical pathway. Parametrix, the biggest medical information system vendor in Switzerland has been using a RIM based