Two fairly common requests we receive from HL7 customers are (1) how to remove all trailing delimiters for fields and segments in HL7 messages and (2) how to "find and replace" for an entire HL7 message (as opposed to one segment/field at a time). The code sample below shows a custom function that solves for item 1 and by extension item 2 above. In other words the same approach can be used for finding/replacing any sequence of chars in an entire HL7 message, with some tweaks to the custom function.

I'm always on the lookout for tools that make the development and testing of my interfaces more efficient. A couple of years ago I came across HL7 Spy, from Inner Harbour Software. It quickly became my go-to tool for running message comparison reports for interface engine migrations, message statistics gathering, and troubleshooting message receipt and delivery. It also offered enhanced functionality for things like fetching messages via sftp that other tools don't provide.

I've recently been working with HL7 Spy's author, Jon Reis, to enable support for fetching messages directly from the Ensemble message store. Its SQL Loader feature now has native Caché/IRIS support, and I've contributed a small server-side class to support the extraction of messages using it.

HL7 (Health Level 7) is a set of technical specifications for computerized exchanges of clinical, financial and administrative data between hospital information systems (HIS). These specifications are variously integrated into the corpus of formal American (ANSI) and international (ISO) standards.

The L7 of HL7 indicates that it is a standard that operates at layer 7, in other words at the application layer, of the OSI model. This means that HL7 does not have to take into account exchange security considerations, or those of message transport (this being ensured by lower-level layers such as SSL/TLS for security or TCP for the transport of data for example). To be more precise, layer 7 supports communications for end-user processes and applications and the presentation of data for user-facing software applications. As the highest layer of the OSI model, and the closest to the end user, layer 7 provides application-specific functions such as identifying communication partners and the quality of service between them, determining resource availability, considering privacy and user authentication, and synchronizing communication, as well as connecting the application to the lower levels of the OSI model.

Returning to the HL7 standard, the HL7 version 2 standard (also known as Pipehat) was originally created in 1989 but is still being used and updated regularly, resulting in versions 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.3.1, 2.4, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.7, 2.7.1, 2.8, 2.8.1, 2.8.2 and 2.9. The v2.x standards are backward compatible (e.g., a message based on version 2.3 will be understood by an application that supports version 2.6) and in higher versions, you will see some fields are left just for it.

Despite it being more than 30 years old, HL7v2 remains the most widely used healthcare interface standard by a large margin according to the HL7.org portal that tells that:

Introduction

This article aims to explore how the FHIR-PEX system operates and was developed, leveraging the capabilities of InterSystems IRIS.

Streamlining the identification and processing of medical examinations in clinical diagnostic centers, our system aims to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of healthcare workflows. By integrating FHIR standards with InterSystems IRIS database Java-PEX, the system help healthcare professionals with validation and routing capabilities, ultimately contributing to improved decision-making and patient care.

(Originally posted by @Ben Spead on June 25, 2014)

This code snippet generates a list of Ensemble Lookup Tables and Schema documents in the user's current namespace. Run the code by running the class method "test":

Class benspead.EnsTablesSchema
{
    classmethod test() {
        If ##class(%Dictionary.CompiledClass).%ExistsId("Ens.Util.LookupTableDocument") {
            // only supported in Ensemble 2012.1+
            Write !,!,"Exporting Ensemble Lookup Tables..."
            Set sc = $$$OK
            Set rs = ##class(%ResultSet).%New("Ens.Util.LookupTableDocument:List")
            Do rs.Execute()
            While rs.Next() {
                Set item=rs.Data("name")
                Write "document found: "_ item,!
            }
            Do rs.Close()
            Set rs=""
        }
        If ##class(%Dictionary.CompiledClass).%ExistsId("EnsLib.HL7.SchemaDocument") {
            Write !,!,"Exporting Ensemble HL7 Schemas..."
            Set sc = $$$OK
            Set rs = ##class(%ResultSet).%New("EnsLib.HL7.SchemaDocument:List")
            Do rs.Execute()
            While rs.Next() {
                Set item=rs.Data("name")
                Continue:$listfind($lb("2.1.HL7","2.2.HL7","2.3.HL7","2.4.HL7","2.5.HL7","2.6.HL7","2.7.HL7","2.3.1.HL7","2.5.1.HL7","2.7.1.HL7","ITK.HL7")
                                    ,item)
                Write "document found: "_ item,!
            }
            Do rs.Close()
            Set rs=""
        }
    }
}

Here's a link to the code on GitHub: https://github.com/intersystems-community/code-snippets/blob/master/src/...

Introduction

InterSystems has recently completed a performance and scalability benchmark of IRIS for Health 2020.1, focusing on HL7 version 2 interoperability. This article describes the observed throughput for various workloads, and also provides general configuration and sizing guidelines for systems where IRIS for Health is used as an interoperability engine for HL7v2 messaging.

Hi Everyone,

Link to webinar recording: https://learning.intersystems.com/course/view.php?id=623

Thank you for your interest in this webinar!

Please submit questions about the content of the webinar as comments below this article.

The aim of my question is to achieve this :

• User with authorization :

• User without authorization :

You can notice that some information of the PID segment are obfuscated.

Over the years, I have found myself needing to create multiple HL7 messages based on a single inbound message. Usually these take the form of an order or result from a lab. Each time I have approached it, I have tried to start from scratch under the belief that the previous attempt could have been done better.

EnsLib.HL7.Message.cls provides many API methods for manipulating an HL7 message. RemoveSegmentAt(), for example, can be used to remove a segment by path or index, but only one segment at a time. There may be times that you'll need to remove all segments within a group or even many groups of segments from the HL7 message. Surely you can iterate through each segment in each group and remove them one by one, but there's a much easier way.

With just one command, like below, you can remove all OBX segments in an ORU_R01 message (msg):

Because I had no idea how to build an integration solution for HL7 and didn't know where to start, I decided to follow the course Building Basic HL7 Integrations with InterSystems on Learning portal to get at least the idea of where to begin. After I studied all of it, I decided it might be a good idea to share my thoughts and reflections about it with everyone.

Written in reply to community post for can Python create HL7 Message dynamically.

Pre-requisites and setup

Use an integration enabled namespace.
Note: USER namespace is not enabled for interoperability by default.
If following suggest create a new interoperatibility namespace to explore functionality.

# Switch to
ZN "[Interoperability Namespace Name]"

# Launch interactive Python shell:
Do $SYSTEM.Python.Shell()

Executive Summary

InterSystems HealthShareÆ and InterSystems EnsembleÆ both provide a rapid integration and development platform with built-in capabilities for the high-speed processing of HL7 messages. For the purposes of HL7 v2 message routing the two products are equivalent in performance. For brevity, this document will just say Ensemble in many places but it should be taken to apply equally to both products.

For those that want to catch up on the FHIR-related content in our Virtual Summit 2020 I put together a list of the Focus Sessions: