Coronavirus and HL7 2.5.1
July 9, 2020 2:40 PM Subscribe
My research lab is working on providing COVID19 testing; the state, while providing alternative ways to report the results, prefers us to be able to generate HL7 2.5.1 messages. However, HL7 is a deep and complicate subject, and all the examples I can find for COVID health reports are implemented in FHIR. Does anyone have advice on the fastest way to learn what I need to know to do this? I'm hoping to use this Python library, since I program in Python the most.
Speaking as someone who has done development work on a health application that included HL7, it is way too complicated for you to want to implement in a rushed manner. All of the HL7 interfaces I've seen in the past were implemented, additionally, using a TCP/IP connection. I have no experience in the way that would work with Python so maybe that's simple enough to set up, but it's just an additional warning. HL7 is the preferred method likely because most EHRs will already have an implementation.
Even though our EHRs do have HL7, we're interfacing with our state by sending them Excel files built in SQL Python R over an sFTP connection. That's something you could easily set up in a day. If that's an option they're offering you that'd be the one I'd go with.
posted by possibilityleft at 6:01 AM on July 10, 2020
Even though our EHRs do have HL7, we're interfacing with our state by sending them Excel files built in SQL Python R over an sFTP connection. That's something you could easily set up in a day. If that's an option they're offering you that'd be the one I'd go with.
posted by possibilityleft at 6:01 AM on July 10, 2020
Have they given you a specification to follow at all? Any idea if they are asking you to send this as an ORU message?
Mirth Connect is a pretty solid Open Source healthcare integration engine that might help you jump start things: https://www.nextgen.com/products-and-services/nextgen-connect-integration-engine-downloads
posted by austinetsu at 6:36 AM on July 10, 2020
Mirth Connect is a pretty solid Open Source healthcare integration engine that might help you jump start things: https://www.nextgen.com/products-and-services/nextgen-connect-integration-engine-downloads
posted by austinetsu at 6:36 AM on July 10, 2020
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There's some good intro content here: https://datica.com/academy/hl7-101-a-primer
The standard itself is not particularly complicated, it's just text with a few levels of delimiters.
posted by allegedly at 2:51 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]