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First, what’s the problem?

One of the problems we hear about from HL7 team leads and their management is that interfaces take a long time to configure. The reasons why boil down to missing information. Here’s what they typically hear back from the team members:

“The fields need fine-tuning.”

“We don’t know up-front which message types will need the most work.”

“That field mapping was a bear because we couldn’t get a complete code set from the source and destination systems.”

“These code sets have [...]

Tip 21 in the Interoperability Tip Series

This tip is especially relevant for Healthcare Information Exchanges (HIEs), regardless of whether your exchange is internal to an IDN or if it connects multiple regional stakeholders from community hospitals to physician practices.

Some interface engines let you view workflow within the engine. But what happens with external systems, such as an HIE transmitting to an internal engine, or multiple systems from different providers connecting across a region? Keeping track of workflow is a [...]

Healthcare Information Exchange Types

There are three basic types of healthcare information exchanges (HIEs): some cover a geographic region (for instance, NCHIE in North Carolina), others a community; and yet others that cover a single hospital system (which in turn may be spread out geographically – for instance, Catholic Health Initiatives).

HIE Business Models: Grants vs. Revenue Generation

While some regional and community HIEs got their start via government grants, many of those grants are coming to their end. Even though they might [...]

Tip 20 in the Interoperability Tip Series

In our previous tip, we explained why you need to map processes and workflows. Many developers list their interfaces and workflows in a spreadsheet. You’ll find examples of what to track in the HL7 Interface Asset Template here.

While a spreadsheet provides a good start, you need to go beyond to capture the details and interconnections to capture a complete picture of your interfacing workflows. After all, in most hospital and HIE environments, you’ll be [...]

Tip 19 in the Interoperability Tip Series

Throughout the Interoperability Tip Series, we’ve stressed the need to complement the message structure and and content details from HL7 profiles with good process and workflow maps for future interfacing asset management. Earlier in the Interoperability Tip Series, Tip 4 emphasized the importance of mapping out the message process and workflow from the very beginning to kick off the planning of an interoperability project.

If you’ve documented your systems and taken the time to map [...]

Tip 18 in the Interoperability Series

What’s The Big Deal?

If you’re just getting your feet wet with clinical and medical applications, you might think: “What’s the big deal? I’ll just hit Google for some sample HL7 messages and get started that way.” 

Don’t do that! If you do, you’ll get some basic structures right – like pipes and carets. But you won’t have any information about the interface you’re trying to build: the message types it uses, the segments and fields, positions, [...]

Brian Ahier is right

Before you read any further, please go right now and check out what health data exchange expert Brian Ahier has to say about C-CDA on the HIStalk blog.  He is right on the money about the need to clear up the problems with CDA/C-CDA documents. Once you’ve read his article, come back here and you’ll get exactly why  we’re building our new CDA functionality around gap analysis.

A bit of context. A few weeks back we talked about [...]

Tip 17 in the Interoperability Tip Series

HL7 Data for Testing

In last week’s tip on HL7 test reporting, we suggested that you use production data for your testing. That said, you obviously can’t use real production data. You need to find a way to remove protected health information (PHI).

That’s where a technique known as de-identification can help. You keep the clinical workflow in the messages, but you remove patient identifiers and replace them with fake values. You can also replace [...]

Over the past few weeks, we’ve reviewed multiple HL7 testing topics. So you know how critical it is to test interfaces during interface configuration, the validation phase, and during maintenance.   This HL7 interface testing checklist will help you design a testing process that covers your most important needs. And if you already have a testing process in place, it will help you identify any areas of concern.

1. We’re running tests to make sure we’re not injecting errors during interface development, [...]

Tip 16 in the Interoperability Tip Series

The past few tips have covered HL7 testing and test automation. This one covers what you should do with HL7 test reporting.

Creating Test Reports    

As part of the testing process, you’ll want to run reports. The reports should document the following: 

The number of times the test was run, as well as test duration – if you’re sending messages, this helps you understand performance.
Test results, including positive validations and failures.
The messages that were used; note [...]