SDO stands for Standards Development Organisation. An SDO is an organization whose primary activities are to develop, administer, coordinate, promulgate, review, amend, republish, interpret standards, profiles, or norms intended to serve the needs of a group of healthcare users. An SDO is generally a non-profit organisation and exists in the interest of the users of the standards.
The objective of SDO collaboration is to initiate and ensure the coordination between standards and specifications, as needed by the users of the standards. The aim is to enhance the work of all of the participating SDOs and support the implementation effort where multiple standards, profiles or norms work together successfully. The collaboration usually takes a policy and strategy perspective, not technical. The technical work remains with the well-established processes and participating experts of the individual SDOs.
International collaboration between SDOs takes place in the so-called Joint Initiative Council (JIC) for Global Health Informatics Standardization.
You can read more about this international collaboration via this link to the JIC white paper.
CEN/TC 251 is one of the three founding members of the JIC, together with ISO/TC 215 and HL7 International. In addition, CEN/TC 251 currently has representatives of the following SDO’s involved in the TC as liaisons:
More information on SDO collaboration in:
The Netherlands
Germany
Switzerland
Austria
