[ubl-comment] HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre Join OASIS UBL Liaisons

[Jon Bosak <Jon.Bosak@sun.com>]

Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 09:41:02 -0400
From: Carol Geyer <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>
Subject: [announce] HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre Join OASIS UBL Liaisons
To: announce@lists.oasis-open.org

HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre Join OASIS UBL Liaisons

Boston, MA, USA; 29 August 2002 -- Data standards organizations
representing health care, banking, prescription eyewear, and
supply chain management have become the latest industry groups to
appoint representatives to the OASIS Universal Business Language
(UBL) Technical Committee. HL7, SWIFT, VCA, and e.centre join
liaisons from a broad group of industry standards organizations in
the subcommittee that provides guidance to UBL, the initiative to
define standard XML business forms for electronic commerce.

"HL7 is not looking to UBL to replace our already existing XML
schemas for medical records," said Wes Rishel, chair of HL7.  "But
health care companies such as hospitals and clinics are major
consumers of supplies from a wide variety of vendors.  Using the
UBL supply chain documents for these ordinary procurement
transactions makes practical sense -- we can concentrate on the
data standards that require our knowledge of health care without
reinventing basic business schemas for supply chain management."

"One of the great challenges SWIFT is actively involved in, as a
standardisation body, is the convergence of the different XML
standardisation initiatives within the finance industry, and the
further alignment across industries," said Jean-Marie Eloy, Head
of Standards for SWIFT.  "We see UBL as a great opportunity to
assist us in ensuring that this convergence will actually happen."

"Prescription eyewear is produced and distributed by a highly
specialized web of businesses" said Bill Thomas, CEO of VCA. "Each
pair of eyeglasses must be custom made to exacting standards to
meet the wide range of prescriptions and the many product
options. Prescription eyewear is a regulated medical device and is
often covered by health insurance plans. All of this results in a
vast quantity of very detailed and often vision-specific business
transactions. We believe that UBL can help us improve the
industry's efficiency in handling these transactions."

"e.centre, on behalf of EAN.UCC, welcomes the opportunity to work
with UBL and hopes that this effort will further the cause of
convergent XML data transfer standards based upon the principles
of ebXML," said James Whittle, Consulting Services Executive for
e.centre.  "As EAN.UCC move to implement ebXML based solutions, it
is vital, on behalf of our one million users worldwide, that we
promote a spirit of co-operation and openness to facilitate
effective and efficient standards development."

Organizations that have already appointed liaisons to UBL include:
ACORD, representing the insurance industry; ARTS, representing
retail sales; ASC X12 and the UN/EDIFACT Working Group,
representing U.S. and international EDI standards; EIDX,
representing the electronics industry; NACS, representing
convenience stores; RosettaNet, the information technology
consortium; and XBRL, the accounting industry standards
organization.  UBL liaisons provide input to UBL and coordinate
the review of standard XML business schemas as they become
publicly available. Information about the UBL Liaison Subcommittee
and its members can be found on the LSC web page at
http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/lsc/.

"Input from industry data exchange organizations ensures that UBL
reflects the needs of the marketplace," said Jon Bosak of Sun
Microsystems, chair of the OASIS UBL Technical Committee and
organizer of the working group that created XML. "Our goal of
defining a common XML library for basic business documents like
purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices crosses all
industries. Contributing to the development of our library of UBL
schemas allows industry groups to pool their resources in the
design of common business documents and to focus their special
expertise on the development of XML schemas for the documents that
are specific to their own domain."

About UBL (http://oasis-open.org/committees/ubl)

The OASIS UBL (Universal Business Language) Technical Committee is
an open, publicly accountable, nonprofit initiative to define a
common XML library for basic business documents like purchase
orders, invoices, and shipping notices.  UBL provides a standard
set of XML building blocks together with a framework that will
enable trading partners to unambiguously identify and exchange
basic e-commerce documents in specific business contexts.

The OASIS UBL effort builds on the Electronic Business XML (ebXML)
infrastructure developed by OASIS and the United Nations.  The
ebXML specifications provide for XML registry services, reliable
XML messaging, standardized trading partner agreements, a standard
data dictionary, and a business context methodology.  However, UBL
documents are usable in a wide variety of other ecommerce
frameworks as well.

UBL unites and harmonizes a number of currently existing XML and
EDI business libraries into a set of internationally recognized de
jure standards. Designed to solve major interoperability problems
for both vendors and users, UBL will speed the entry of small and
medium-size businesses into the electronic marketplace. UBL is
freely available to everyone without legal encumbrance or
licensing fees.

About HL7 (www.HL7.org)

Founded in 1987, Health Level Seven, Inc. is a not-for-profit,
ANSI-accredited Standards Development Organization (SDO) dedicated
to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for
the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic
health information that supports clinical practice and the
management, delivery and evaluation of health services. In
addition to its widely used messaging standards, HL7 published, in
2000, the first XML-based health care standard, the Clinical
Document Architecture (CDA), a framework for clinical document
exchange.  Other HL7 publications include the Clinical Context
Management Specification (CCOW), a standard enabling visual
integration at the front-end, and The Arden Syntax, an
ANSI-approved standard for representing and sharing medical
knowledge for clinical decision support.  HL7 has established
international affiliates in 20 countries around the globe, and its
2,200 members represent over 500 corporations, including 90
percent of the largest information systems vendors serving health
care.

About SWIFT (http://www.swift.com/)

SWIFT is the industry-owned cooperative supplying secure messaging
services and interface software to 7,000 financial institutions in
197 countries.  SWIFT carried over 1.5 billion messages in 2001.
The average daily value of payment messages on SWIFT is estimated
to be above USD 6 trillion.  SWIFT provides messaging services to
banks, broker/dealers and investment managers, as well as to
market infrastructures in payments, treasury, securities and
trade.  These services help customers reduce costs, improve
automation and manage risk. SWIFT is also leading convergence
initiatives in the finance industry, collaborating with over 30
different organisations involved in financial standards.

About VCA (http://www.visionsite.org)

Vision Council of America is the U.S. prescription eyewear trade
association representing 2,000 supplier companies and 80 leading
manufacturers. VCA member companies do business in more than 40
countries around the world.  The U.S. eyewear industry, with over
30,000 stores across the country, posted sales of $15 billion for
2001.

About e.centre (http://www.e-centre.org.uk)

e.centre is an independent, not-for-profit association providing
guidance and support for its 16,000+ members on supply chain
efficiency through the use of the EAN.UCC System for bar coding
and business-to-business communications such as EDI (electronic
data interchange).  e.centre is the UK authority for the EAN.UCC
System, which is used in 129 countries worldwide and forms the
basis of interoperable solutions such as asset tracking,
traceability and collaborative planning.

About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the
development, convergence and adoption of e-business
standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda,
using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote
industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces
worldwide standards for security, Web services, XML conformance,
business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and
interoperability within and between marketplaces. OASIS has more
than 500 corporate and individual members in 100 countries around
the world.

For more information:
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS (www.oasis-open.org)
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209