Hello Developers!

Have you ever had to convert HL7v2 messages to FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) and found the process complicated and confusing? InterSystems is rolling out a new cloud based SaaS offering called InterSystems FHIR Transformation Service, which makes the process easy. We are excited to announce an Early Access Preview Program for our new offering, and we would love to have you kick the tires and let us know what you think! All you need is a free AWS account, with an S3 bucket to drop in your HL7v2 messages, and another S3 bucket to get your FHIR output.

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I have attached a document that describes the product I have developed called NiPaRobotica Pharmacy. This is an interface I developed that accepts Pharmacy Dispense Requests and converts the line items on the order into dispense dialogues which it sends to pharmacy robots. I deployed the interface into 3 Hospital pharmacies two of which had 6 robots that were arranged in such a way that the dispense chutes channelled medications to desks by the pharmacists sitting in windows serving 1200 patients a day. The robots cut the average waiting time from 2 hours down to one hour.

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In this article we are going to see how we can use the WhatsApp instant messaging service from InterSystems IRIS to send messages to different recipients. To do this we must create and configure an account in Meta and configure a Business Operation to send the messages we want.

Let's look at each of these steps in more detail.

Setting up an account on Meta

This is possibly the most complicated point of the entire configuration, since we will have to configure a series of accounts until we can have the messaging functionality.

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This article will describe and include an example of how to embed an external PDF file into an HL7 segment, specifically ADT_A01:2.3.1 OBX(). This can be useful when attempting to insert pictures or other external data into an HL7 message. In this example, the name of the PDF file to be embedded is provided in the incoming HL7 message in OBX(1):ObservationValue field.

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Article
· Nov 29, 2022 6m read
What's HL7v2?!

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:

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Contestant

One of the pain points for maintaining HL7 interfaces is the need to run a reliable regression test upon deployment to new environments and after upgrades. The %UnitTest class allows unit tests to be created and packaged alongside interface code. Test data can also be maintained within the unit test class, allowing for quick and easily repeatable smoke-testing and regression testing.

Resources:

  • Standard %UnitTest class

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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.

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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.

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Introduction

Say you have a receiving system that accepts HL7 and provides error messages in field ERR:3.9 in the ACK it returns. You require a different reply code action depending on the error message, however the Reply Code Actions settings for the operation do not provide this level of granularity. One option could be to create a process that takes the ACK and then completes the action you were expecting, however things can get a bit messy if the action is to retry the message, especially when trying to view a message trace.

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In the previous article, we've discussed the origin of the standard HL7v2, the structure and the types of messages. Let's now look at one of the most used types of messages and an example of its structure. I'm talking about ADT.

HL7 ADT messages (Admit, Discharge, Transfer) are used to communicate basic patient information, visit information and patient state at a healthcare facility. ADT messages are one of the most widely-used and high volume HL7 message types, as it provides information for many trigger events including patient admissions, registrations, cancellations, updates, discharges, patient data merges, etc.

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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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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.

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InterSystems and Intel recently conducted a series of benchmarks combining InterSystems IRIS with 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, also known as “Cascade Lake”, and Intel® Optane™ DC Persistent Memory (DCPMM). The goals of these benchmarks are to demonstrate the performance and scalability capabilities of InterSystems IRIS with Intel’s latest server technologies in various workload settings and server configurations. Along with various benchmark results, three different use-cases of Intel DCPMM with InterSystems IRIS are provided in this report.

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Hi Community,

Please welcome the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

FHIR Overview @ Virtual Summit 2020

https://www.youtube.com/embed/KBrvJvJLIXA
[This is an embedded link, but you cannot view embedded content directly on the site because you have declined the cookies necessary to access it. To view embedded content, you would need to accept all cookies in your Cookies Settings]

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Hello Community,

The Certification Team of InterSystems Learning Services is excited to announce the release of our new InterSystems HL7® Interface Specialist exam. This is an updated and rebranded version of our previous HL7 exam, formerly know as HealthShare Health Connect HL7® Interface Specialist. It is now available for purchase and scheduling in InterSystems exam catalog. Potential candidates can review the exam topics and the practice questions to help orient them to exam question approaches and content. Candidates who successfully pass the exam will receive a digital certification badge that can be shared on social media accounts like LinkedIn.

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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()

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Article
· Sep 20, 2016 4m read
Diagnosing Framing Errors

Framing refers to the characters that mark the start and end of an HL7 message (or other types of framed messages). Most HL7 services and operations have a Framing setting that allows the user to define this framing. The most common choices are available as defaults, but with the AsciiMM/NN setting, components can be configured to recognize any framing characters.

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Hey Developers!

This week is a voting week for the InterSystems IRIS for Health FHIR Contest!

So, it's time to give your vote to the best FHIR solutions built with InterSystems IRIS for Health.

🔥 You decide: VOTING IS HERE 🔥

How to vote? This is easy: you will have one vote, and your vote goes either in Experts Nomination or in Community Nomination.

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Hi Community!

We're pleased to invite you to the Online meetup with the winners of the InterSystems FHIR programming contest!

Date & Time: Friday, September 4, 2020 – 11:00 EDT

What awaits you at this virtual Meetup?

  • Our winners' bios.
  • Short demos on their applications.
  • A short interview with all the winners about the past contest. Plans for the next contests.

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