Data Mapping from an HL7 Message in the eiConsole for Healthcare

This is a demonstration of the eiConsole for Healthcare data map created from the HL7 message template. Using the eiConsole for Healthcare, it’s easy to map from any HL7 message to any other data format. Let’s show you how.

Create a New Source Transformation

Simply create a new route, define a source and define a target. Next, we’ll create a new source transformation. We’ll call it “Map from HL7 Message”. First, we’ll need to take our HL7 and transform it into XML. So, we’ll use our transformation module. Let’s scroll down to HL7 2.X; you can choose our version here, which, in this case, we’ll use 2.4, and we’ll also scroll down to use the “friendly names” option.

Configure Mapping into XSLT

Next, we’ll need to configure our mapping into XSLT transformation. By clicking “New,” we’ll open the Data Mapper. Here, we need to load it in our source and target formats, starting with the source format. Here, we will use our HL7 format builder. Again, we’ll choose our version, 2.4 and choose “friendly names”; we’ll also use a sample file. We’ll use this lab result message as our HL7 sample file. Hit “open” and “read format”. Here, on the left, you can see the structure of the HL7 message.

Load Desired Target Format

Next, we’ll load in the desired target format, which will be a custom XML structure. I’ll use the XML format builder.  Select from the drop-down and here we can also choose a sample file. In this case, I’m going to use the custom lab results XML file. Hit “reformat” – that will pull that structure over here on the right.

To map from one to the other, I’ll create a target template using the sample data. The structure of my target data will appear in the center panel. To map values from the HL7 message, I’ll simply navigate to the appropriate segment field or component and drag and drop. For demonstration purposes, I’ll map the last name, the first name, and the date of birth.

If we need to do any further manipulation of the data, the palliative structures above the mapping can be used to accommodate that. For instance, if we want to map the inbound date format onto an XML date format, we can use the date/time formatting tool. Simply drop this formatter right into the date of birth. You’ll get a pop-up box where you can have the input pattern that you expect from your HL7 message and also input the output pattern that you expect your custom XML to have. In this case, our HL7 message is coming in as YYYYMMDD. I want to format that automatically into YYYY-MM-DD. Hit ‘OK’ to apply that. We continue in this fashion until all the various fields are mapped. You can go ahead and then save our mapping and return to the eiConsole.

eiConsole’s Testing Mode

We can now test the mapping in the eiConsole’s testing mode. First, I’ll configure my test and use a sample file to feed through it. We’ll use the same lab result HL7 message that we used for the mapping. Hit “open.” Now, when I hit “execute test,” you’ll see these three question marks turn into green checkmarks.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at the output. Here’s our input HL7 message. Now, we can see its transformation to XML. Finally, we will map under the custom format, where we can see the fields that we mapped here in this demo.

So, it’s just that easy! We used the HL7 transformation module to convert the HL7 message into XML. We perform our mapping using drag & drop in the data mapper and then we test in the testing mode. In minutes, we built the transformation from any HL7 message to any other format.

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HL7 is the registered trademark of Health Level Seven International.