HL7 Parsing Component of the eiConsole for Healthcare

This is a demonstration of the eiConsole for Healthcare’s HL7 lenient parsing capability. Many systems and organizations require or produce non-standards compliant HL7 messages.

HL7 Middleware that is lacking a lenient parsing capability is crippled in these all too common scenarios. It renders the software useless.

While other products may choke on these non-standard HL7 messages, the eiConsole for Healthcare’s lenient HL7 Parser can parse unknown segments capturing the data for subsequent transformation and manipulation.

Select HL7 Version

The eiConsole’s leading parsing capability is exposed and enabled simply by selecting the HL7 Version 2.x Transformer from the Transformation module drop-down. Out-of-the-box, this component now has the capability to parse anything that looks remotely like an HL7 Version 2.X message.

Standard & Custom HL7 Segment Conversions

Let’s take a look at two examples. In the first example, we’ll choose an HL7 input file that includes a custom HL7 segment that’s not a part of the HL7 data dictionary.

Here’s the input to the process. You’ll see we have what is largely a standard HL7 message with one invented custom segment with a segment identifier, ABC.

Most tools will simply fail when trying to convert this into an XML or parsed representation. However, with lenient parsing, we can see how we can convert the message to XML including our custom segments.

Let’s look at one more example. This time we’ll choose an HL7 document; where instead of including a completely unknown segment, we have a modified segment. It doesn’t match the definition in the HL7 vocabulary.

Let’s take a look at the input. Here at the end of the last segment, we see a complex set of fields, components, and sub-components that are not part of the standard.

Reviewing the output of the transformation module, we can see how that data is captured so it could be mapped to other data formats and further manipulated downstream.

Standardize All Your Messages

As we’ve shown the lenient parson capability of the eiConsole for Healthcare fills a vital gap in interoperability for health.

Organizations that have customized HL7 to suit their very specific requirements and as a result produced non-standards compliant HL7 will now be able to communicate with all entities in the healthcare ecosystem.

Free Trial Version of eiConsole

We invite you to take advantage of PilotFish’s eiConsole for Healthcare by downloading a full FREE 90-Day Trial Version. Users can try out our new EDI Transformation Module and Format Builder. With the Quick Start Tutorial, users can complete an end-to-end interface in less than 20 minutes and get a real sense of the ease-of-use of PilotFish’s interface engine solution.

HL7 is the registered trademark of Health Level Seven International.