A standards organisation or standards development organisation (SDO) is focused on the development of one or more standards, through a collaborative, consensus-based process. Although standards organisations differ slightly from each other, they all tend to follow a similar development process.
Proposals for a new standard may arise from any participating country organisation, or be submitted by a community of professionals, users or companies who have identified the need to standardise some aspects of health information or its communication. Sometimes this is received as a request and sometimes there is already some work done, for example within one country, which could serve as a starting point for developing the standard.
Once the SDO has determined that the request falls inside its scope (because there are different standards bodies that focus on different aspects of health information), it will develop a formal proposal to develop a new standard. This proposal will be sent to all of its members, for example ISO will send a proposal to all of the participating countries, to vote on.
If a starting point document is also provided, then the members will comment on that document, to indicate its suitability for their needs (for example if it would be applicable to their country), indicating if they have any other similar documents that could be taken into account, or if they have any specific concerns or needs that the standard must also meet. Members are also free to propose experts who could contribute to the development of the standard.
If the voting ballot approves the development of the new standard, the pool of experts who have been nominated by the members for a project team will then work on the development of the standard for anywhere between several months and a couple of years. During that time they may have one or two proposed versions of the standard which are sent out to all of the members to examine, vote on, and comment on.
Once these comments have been addressed a final version of the standard is voted on one last time, and then published.
Standards organisations review their standards periodically to keep them relevant and up-to-date in an evolving environment.
Some standards are free to access online, others require payment of a fee, a little like paying for a book.
You can read more about how standards are developed on the ISO website
