Pele Yu, M.D, program director for the UAMS Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program, received the 2021 W. Edward Hammond, Ph.D., Volunteer of the Year Award.
The award was announced during the Sept. 22 HL7 Working Group Annual Business Meeting, held online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two others were also honored: John D’Amore, president of More Informatics; and Janet Marchibroda, president of Alliance for Cell Therapy Now.
Established in 1997, the award is named after Dr. Hammond, one of HL7’s most active volunteers and a
founding member as well as past board chair. The award recognizes individuals who have made significant
contributions to HL7’s success.
Dr. Yu has been active with HL7 since 2003, when he became a founding member of the HL7 Child Health Work Group and served as its chair from 2008 until 2016. In 2012, he co-authored the HL7 Version 3 Implementation Guide for CDA® R2 L3: Neonatal Care Reports (NCR), R1 – a standard that specifies a standard for electronic submission of neonatal care records (NCRs) and facilitates electronic extraction of a subset of the Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium (CHNC) dataset using a standard reporting specification in the form of a Neonatal Care Report (NCR) to support performance improvement and research.
In 2017, Dr. Yu also co-authored the HL7 Developmental Screening and Reporting Services Derived Profile, Release 1 – US Realm – a standards that identifies the critical EHR capabilities for pediatric Developmental Screening and Reporting services. In addition, he has served as co-chair of the HL7 EHR WG since 2016, where he began to work on the HL7 Pediatric Care Health IT Functional Profile project, which will establish a standard that will support the Recommendations for the Voluntary Certification of Health IT for Use in Pediatric Care settings, as published by the 21st Century Cures Act and the U.S. ONC Health IT Certification Program.
In addition to serving as program director for the CI Fellowship, Dr. Yu is Chief Medical Information Officer at Arkansas Children’s Hospital and a professor Pediatrics, Biomedical Informatics and Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Health Level Seven® International (HL7) is an ANSI-accredited, not-for-profit standards developing organization with the mission of empowering global health interoperability. With affiliates in over 30 countries, HL7’s global membership envisions a world in which everyone can securely access and use the right data when and where they need it.