The Division's support of various standards activities over its fifteen years of the Division's history has been driven by the perception that the clinical laboratory has always been a major provider of information for healthcare and will continue to be in an Electronic Health Record environment. Hence it has supported the various voluntary consensus standards activities that have now become part of an international framework. The challenge will be to ensure that the common conventions documented in American National Standards also become a part of International Standards that lead to an interoperable healthcare information domain.
Interoperability consists of both content and implementation dimensions.
The 1996 meeting was most successful due particularly to the work of the San Diego section and its Chair Dr. Craig Jackson. Knowing that the scenario can be very beneficial to clinical laboratorians, subsequent efforts have worked hard to better the offering. The ability to improve will depend upon active close work by the Division with the AACC local sections in the settings of this meeting. We invite each local section to contact the Division as the TEPR venue is made known for each year. Another meeting of importance is the American Medical Informatics Association Fall Symposium.