The following items are being discussed in the Control/Query technical committee for addition to future versions of HL7.
1. Rationalization and clarification of event structures.
2. Creation of a network server for HL7 tables so that updates to them can be made public immediately, rather than waiting until the publication of the next version of the Standard.
3. Extensions to the encoding rules for Version 3.
4. Consideration of security. There are in general two types: application level security, which is partially addressed by the security field in the MSH segment. The second type, network security, needs to be addressed in the HL7 Implementation Guide. There are several commercially available encryption-based approaches to network level security.