While Jaffe admitted that removing the fee associated with the use of the HL7 standard could hurt membership in his organization, he believes membership will grow since Stage 3 of Meaningful Use is under development by the ONC. Members of HL7 will have a greater opportunity to provide input into the development of those federal rules, he said.

The federal government has already poured millions of dollars into creating regional and state level HIEs that act as engines for providers to exchange patient information. The federal government is also in the process of developing a Nationwide Health Information Network, which is aimed at making it possible for a patient's health information to travel anywhere the patient goes.

Private vendors, such as Verizon, have also created -based patient health information exchanges.

Yet the health information exchange market is still nascent.

Williams said the federal government recognizes that there won't be a single model for deploying HIEs, although it wants a single standard for exchanging the data so that all HIEs can speak the same language. The existence of different protocols for data exchange is making HIEs expensive to deploy, she said.