Version Control and Ballot Process

Release Strategy

We have recently moved from Discovery phase to a Standard for Trial Use 1 (STU1) for ballot as part of our release strategy. The profiles in DRAFT have had a first pass review by our Interoperability Task & Finish Group to integrate coding standards and Value Sets as dictated by Data Standards Wales.

  1. Discovery phase - completed
  2. v0.1.0 STU1 (and onwards) for ballot - current phase (26/05/2023 onwards)
  3. v1.0.0 STU1 for pre-release
  4. v1.0.0 STU1 for implementation

This release strategy follows the UK Core Publication History.

Balloting

Following the first STU1 for ballot release, we will develop a review strategy to obtain feedback on profiles. This will be circulated in due course.

Change Management

We are currently developing our change management strategy and we will ensure that all stakeholders are informed of changes to the implementation guide. To date this has been handled through the Interoperability Standards Working Group and the ballot process. We have begun to use Azure DevOps to track all changes on a per release basis and we eventually turn the projects user stories into release notes. These will be disseminated via an email distribution list which you can ask to be added to via the data standards email inbox. A more detailed breakdown of changes that have occurred in new releases will also be provided on the implementation guide.

Standard for Trial Use (STU) Explanation

The STU nomenclature is used as standard terminology in FHIR implementation guides. STU is usually suffixed with a number to denote the current version (e.g. STU1, STU2, etc...) and the number will increase after every ballot. Due to this we have decided to adopted this naming convention for our releases.
It should be noted that HL7 and UK Core, who provide the base profiles our project uses, both have their own STU numbering. These and our own releases, therefore, have three separate STU numbering sequences that are not interchangeable. Please ensure that the correct STU sequence is being referenced depending on the release and provider.