Need help on HL7

Question

Hi All,

I need all your help in guiding me with working on HL7 Interface Integration which I am to work on between two disperate clinical applications.

Its something like this ,let me explain my query with an example.

"We have Epic system that places orders(lab,medications..etc) presently.Now,next these lab orders are to result in another Cerner application.

For this,there has to be a INTERFACE ENGINE which has to read the HL7 messages coming from the EPIC system and translate them to proper messages for the Cerner SYSTEM and then write into their database.

So,could you please explain me with an example interface engine which reads the HL-7 messages first and translates them to Cerner application format.

How will i implement a Interface Engine here which would read the EPIC data?

What steps are involved? An example would be best.

Mainly,orders are first placed in EPIC and is to resulted in Cerner applications.

**PLEASE PLEASE help me with understanding the process,and how to do interface intregation with an Interface Engine?

Thanks Rohit

Answer 1

HL7 is a hairy beast, and by far your best bet is to look at using a pre-built interface engine that takes care of the problem for you. Something like Mirth Connect, which is a Java based system for receiving, decoding, routing, and firing events based on HL7 messages. Mirth is free software and open source under the Mozilla Public License and being based on Java it runs on most major OS or your can purchase dedicated hardware appliances to interface with HL7 devices. It can be used to transform HL7 messages between different systems and also works well for converting from HL7 to other protocols (TCP, SQL/ODBC, File, JMS, FTP, SOAP/HTTP).

For more information on Mirth Connect check out their Webinars or check out the Wiki for examples.

Answer 2

Most critical in comparing engines (IMO) is total cost of ownership. Interfaces have a long life cycle -- they takes minutes to months to create and then live forever. The logging, monitoring, alerting (etc) features in the engine are critical to success over the life of an interface.

Pushing HL7 messages around via any engine is "pretty easy" these days. Commercial or open source engines allow the trivial interfaces to come up fast. Commercial tools typically differentiate by making the non-trivial interfaces much easier to build. The best engines make interface construction fast, easy, and dare I say fun. :-)

Some white papers to provide background and thoughts in your search:

http://www.corepointhealth.com/whitepapers/evolution-hl7 -- deep review of HL7 V2 and V3

If you're open to commercial software, check the KLAS rankings.

Disclosure: I'm CTO at Corepoint Health (which provides a commercial interface engine) and Co-Chair Infrastructure and Messaging (InM) Committee at HL7.

Answer 3

One more white paper to consider:

http://www.corepointhealth.com/whitepapers/role-of-interface-engine-in-modern-healthcare -- major functions of an engine

Answer 4

http://www.ganilo.net/hl7kit/hl7kit_products.html