HL7

DTL Transformations and GetValueAt/SetValueAt calls on HL7 messages will truncate any fields longer than 32K.  To avoid this, the methods GetFieldStreamRaw and StoreFieldStreamRaw must be used when dealing with fields that might be larger than 32K.  OBX:5 is a frequent example.  These methods have some subtleties and must be used carefully.

This can't be done by simply dragging from left to right in a DTL.  It must be done with a code action.  Also, the StoreFieldStreamRaw call must be the last edit made to the segment because the segment becomes immutable after that.

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.

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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):

This post is intended to share how we have implemented HL7 v.2.x in XML format in several Ensemble projects.

We have added to our local InterSystems Iberia GitHub repository a package which uses an approach that takes advantage of EnsLib.HL7.Message class.

More information here:

https://github.com/intersystems-ib/Ensemble-HL7-XML

This is a sample Ensemble/Health Connect production which demonstrates how to receive an HL7 order (ORM) inbound from a file, extract fields (in this case, basic demographic information), and insert those into a table in an external SQL database via ODBC.  

Included in the zip file:

• Exported code
• Sample ORM message
• 'How to configure' doc 

Synopsis: I need to "sideline" messages for subsequent selection and data enrichment while maintaining manageability within the Ensemble framework.

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For testing purposes, I would like to create an EnsLib.HL7.Message from either a %String or a file on disk and pass it into a function in a unit test (outside of an Ensemble context). EnsLib.HL7.Parser appears to do the necessary parsing, but it also sends the message via Ensemble service rather than returning it as a value. Is there a way to leverage the parsing outside of a Ensemble service? Alternatively, is there another way to create an EnsLib.HL7.Message?

I see the TS and DT data types in the default 2.3 schema:

I have a tool I absolutely love for HL7 v2 analysis and manipulation. It's called 7edit.  I'm wondering if there is anything similar for HL7v3/CDA/CCD.  I know it is considerably more complex, but I still have hope.

So far the best resource I've found is http://www.cdapro.com/.  I'd love to hear anyone else's tips for tools or resources.

Way back when during our Siemens LCR days we had to limit the number of characters in OBX.5 to a length of 75. That was back when we had eGate.

Now I need to do the reversal of that and take loop through a string length and split the string up into multiple OBX or NTE based on a certain length. In reading documentation $EXTRACT can do this if you know the exact length, but in this case we don't. 

So how would one loop through a string and say every 75 characters create a new OBX or NTE segment?

Thanks

Scott

Hi,

I would like to use EnsLib.HL7.Operation.HTTPOperation for sending HL7 messages via HTTP. It sends the Content-Type as "text/html"

I would like to change it to something else, say "text/plain". I cannot see a way to do it.

I have now written a custom Operation (based on EnsLib.HTTP.OutboundAdapter) and modifying the Content-Type while POSTing using SendFormDataArray(). It's bit frustrating to parse the response etc.,

I would rather prefer to use HTTPOperation of HL7. Can somebody help?

Hi, 

It is sometimes undesirable to send a full demographic or results feed to departmental clinical systems, that only see a subset of the patients.

While some systems (paediatrics, maternity, geriatrics) can filter on patient demographics, a number of systems are for cohorts of patients that don't fit a particular criteria.

One of our system vendors has a patient index filter service that keeps a local index of relevant patient identifiers, and only forwards matching messages.