Hospitals use the International Health Level Seven (HL7) messaging standard to control and manage operation information flow affecting many things they do for their patients. This covers things like identifying patients, admitting patients, discharging patients, ordering tests, communicating the results of tests, prescribing patterns of care, communicating medication regimens, requesting physician information and many others. As blood establishments integrate more closely with their hospital customers to gain efficiencies in a tough economy, blood establishments may be required to understand how our customers use HL7 today and how we will be affected by it tomorrow.