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First of all, a big thank-you goes out to all the folks who signed up for our beta. Because of your input, our products are a lot more useful and a whole lot more compelling than a few months back.

Betas Are Good For Branding and Messaging, Too

Our beta users provided great feedback on user workflows and functionality, which we incorporated into this release. They also delivered a healthy pipeline of enhancement requests. Plus we identified (and fixed) bugs.

We also got [...]

Caristix Launches HL7 Integration Management Software for Healthcare Vendors and Hospital IT Teams

HL7 Interface analysts and engineers eliminate time-consuming manual work to leave more time to bridge healthcare data gaps through interface engines, HIEs, and more.

Quebec City, Canada, November 5, 2010 — Caristix, an HL7 integration software company serving healthcare vendors and providers, today announced the release of new software designed for interface analysts and engineers. Caristix™ Conformance and Caristix™ Test software help close information gaps before work begins on [...]

When provider organizations are on a tight deadline to implement or upgrade an EHR, EMR, HIS or other clinical system, setting up a test or staging system can seem like just another procedural hurdle. So it couldn’t hurt to just do the final testing in the live, production system, right?

Wrong.

Why It’s Tempting

It might seem quicker to simply tag test data as “Test Patient1″ in “Bed #1-T” and get it into the production EMR or HIS. You skip duplicate server (or [...]

Here’s what Barry Holleman, Vice President, Clinical Technologies, at Cardinal Health Canada had to say recently about Caristix:

“Cardinal Health Canada was seeking ways to cut HL7 interface validation time on our product deployments, without sacrificing quality processes. We were aiming to cut 20 to 25% off our troubleshooting time. Instead, Caristix software enabled our interface engineers to streamline troubleshooting much more significantly. In one case, what was a 2 hour task now takes just 10 minutes.

“I would also like to [...]

While clinical end-users count on interfaces to deliver the functionality and interoperability they need, IT stakeholders need to be sure everyone involved gets the steps and costs involved. Especially since interfacing takes up 20 to 40% of an implementation project timeline. Here’s a quick overview to get everyone on the same page.

HL7 Interface Lifecycle

Scoping

An interface analyst scopes the interfacing project.
The analyst performs a gap analysis based on the client’s current information system environment and the new system to be [...]

Yesterday, CCHIT launched their ONC-mandated test and certification program and delivered a one-hour webcast on their process. Slides and a recording are available on the CCHIT site.

One thing is clear. Certification is just the first step. Certification means that the EHR system or module meets NIST testing criteria for functionality and security related to Stage 1 Meaningful Use measures. But implementation and related integration issues still loom in the background.

At least three objectives in the core and menu sets require [...]

I recently had a discussion with some of our partners around conformance profiles and templates. Collectively, we haven’t come across an industry-standard template. Some organizations build their own. Others decide to go without because templates can take time and effort to set up. We think a conformance profile should help you clearly and concisely communicate what your system expects in terms of data exchange. In healthcare, this isn’t a trivial task. Learn more about conformance profiles in healthcare, which we [...]

Definition

Let’s start with the formal definition, introduced by the HL7 organization in the v2.5 specification. Here is an excerpt from section 2.12:

Definition: An HL7 message profile is an unambiguous specification of one or more standard HL7 messages that have been analyzed for a particular use case. It prescribes a set of precise constraints upon one or more standard HL7 messages.

In other words, this is a description of the data and messages that an interface sends and/or receives. The description covers [...]

What can you do to improve the HL7 interface validation process on your next implementation project?

I was on-site at a hospital where a vendor was doing a product upgrade. The vendor and the hospital IT team were both committed to getting it done right, so the 2-week interface validation was thorough. That investment pays off. The upfront work pays off down the line in reduced help desk wait time and service calls.

Based on this experience, here are 4 tips to [...]

There seems to be two conflicting needs in software testing in healthcare: traceability and test performance.

Traceability Traceability is the ability to link your requirements to your tests:

In healthcare, regulatory compliance is on the side of traceability. Reasonably enough, regulators want to know that products actually do what they’re designed to do. Traceability provides that chain of evidence.

Test Performance However, traceability can come at the expense of test performance — defined as how efficiently a product can be tested both for [...]