Anticlue

Standardize HL7 Interfaces In-House

I would dare to say that all Health Care Institutions have an interface engine, I'm scared to think of the institution that doesn't. Although, if there is a place, please let me know about it. And do you have one centralized database for the place? Possibly Meditech?

Back to the topic at hand, there are 3 main types of HL7 interfaces, ADT (Admission, Discharge, and Transfer), Orders, and Results. I am proposing that standard templates in house of these interfaces be created, compliant with Hl7 2.4 (pipe delimited) and HL7 3 (XML based). Then based upon this interface standard, include maintainence enhancements. For instance on an ADT interface, with the invision system, include the Invision function that created the event. So what the end result would be, is a standard data elements that would be interfaced to any system, and decreased development time, by not needing to cut and paste out of other interfaces, and a better quality of interface. Other benefits of having standard interface templates for transactions and segments, would be a standardized naming convention, a standardized segment structure, standardized user-exits, and so on. A lot of positives for a little standardization work.