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There's a two day HL7 RIMBAA meeting in Washington DC this week (see one of the next columns for a report) - which for me (as a European) means living out of sync with my fellow meeting attendees. The meeting is for two days only, and the time difference is just 6 hours (Europe being 6 hours ahead of Washington) - so I'm sticking to my own timezone. No sense in burdening myself with a jet lag when I can simply adhere to my own timezone.

Hotels don't really cater to people who decide to do so. I sleep from 6pm to 2am (all times local), .. and then there's no breakfast (or any other food for that matter) to be had. So I bought some peanuts from the guy who has the night shift at the front desk. I switch on all of the room lights and listen to a breakfast radio show (internet radio) and work until 7:30am (lunch for me, breakfast for my American colleagues). The meeting starts at 10:00am, and runs until 5pm, with lunch (my dinner). I won't be joining my colleagues for their dinner, as it's time to go to sleep again. All of this to ensure that I won't have a jet lag, neither on this nor or the other side of the Atlantic.

Given the number of short-stay visitors from Europe in Washington - why isn't there such a thing as a "Timezone (TM) Hotel" where facilities, and even the lighting, are adjusted to visitors from other timezones?

-Rene

PS. Also see the related article A brief history of time zones on the BBC World website.

PermaLink to this page: https://www.ringholm.com/column/Timezone_Hotel.htm

Index of columns:

• EHDS questions from the Rotterdam HL7 Meeting (May 26, 2026)
• EHDS Governance Models (May 06, 2026)
• Get ready for EHDS implementation - EHDS-on-FHIR training course (Apr 10, 2026)
• EHDS will have an impact well before 2029 (Feb 13, 2026)
• EHDS checklist for application vendors and provider organizations (Nov 11, 2025)
• New EHDS-on-FHIR training course (Oct 26, 2025)
• Gender Identity in Interoperability Standards (Aug 25, 2025)
• FHIR and Narrative content (Jun 11, 2025)
• 6 Rules for Successful Interoperability Projects (Feb 13, 2025)
• Deploying FHIR at Scale (Dec 18, 2024)
• 9 Key Problems When Connecting to 400+ Servers (Sep 25, 2024)
• FHIR for HL7v2 experts (Aug 18, 2023)
• The FHIR open license (Feb 18, 2022)
• Bye bye IHE XDS and CDA. (Sep 01, 2021)
• Combining the best of IHE XDS with HL7 FHIR (Jun 27, 2019)
• FHIR DevDays and the year in review (Dec 27, 2018)
• Creation and Curation of FHIR Profiles - process and governance (Dec 14, 2017)
• Impact of the GDPR on the use of interoperability standards (Jun 27, 2017)
• Next XDS Release (Oct 27, 2016)
• Five years of FHIR (Aug 11, 2016)
• Update from the trenches on CDA R2.1/R3 and HL7v2. (Oct 15, 2015)
• Most often implemented IHE Profiles (Jun 08, 2015)
• Mapping HL7v2 messages to FHIR. (Apr 13, 2015)
• Recent and Future developments of the DICOM standard (Mar 06, 2014)
• Documenting the history of HL7 (Sep 03, 2013)
• Interoperability Standards - the no-sales pitch (Jul 09, 2013)
• CDA Implementation Guides - (not) invented here (Apr 17, 2013)
• Usage of IHE Profiles (Feb 25, 2013)
• 10 year anniversary - Dutch Ringholm HL7 v2 training courses. (Feb 19, 2013)
• HL7 Connectathons (Sep 09, 2012)
• Frequency of use of HL7 message types (Jul 24, 2012)
• Reflections on the HL7 membership model - the affiliate life cycle (Dec 28, 2011)
• RFH (Resources for Health): HL7 version 3 taken to the next step (Aug 18, 2011)
• Timezone Hotel (Mar 29, 2011)
• The changing role of HL7 country organizations (Jul 16, 2010)
• How to lower the hurdle for HL7 v3 implementers (Jan 21, 2010)
• The HL7 roadmap for CDA R3 and the CCD (Jan 17, 2009)
• HL7 based Tree inventory system (Jan 30, 2007)
• Workflow Bribery (Sep 15, 2006)

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Ringholm bv is a group of European experts in the field of messaging standards and systems integration in healthcare IT. We provide the industry's most advanced training courses and consulting on healthcare information exchange standards.
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