Re: [Health-dev] HL7 support in GNU Health

[Emilien Klein]

Le 23 nov. 2012 22:10, "Emilien Klein" <address@hidden> a écrit :
>
> Hi Luis and the team,
>
> 2012/11/23 Luis Falcon <address@hidden>:
> > On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Emilien Klein
> > <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> I've also started a new page about contributing to the project:
> >> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GNU_Health/Contributing
> >> Reason is that I'm thinking about adding HL7 support, starting with
> >> basic ADT (I'll send more details later) but for now I'm a bit unclear
> >> on how you guys set up your development environments. It would be nice
> >> if you could add some details to that page, serving as a first step
> >> for people that want to start coding.
> >>
> > Great ! We tend to integrate Health with free software middleware,
> > like Mirth connect or others for HL7 messaging. But please feel free
> > to let us know your thoughts.
>
> Can you expand a little bit? Does this mean that by integrating GNU
> Health with those middleware, you're able to send HL7 messages (for
> example when a new patient is created, admitted, discharged, or when
> appointments are made, orders are placed, etc?) directly when those
> actions happen in GNU Health? If that's the case, then it maybe isn't
> necessary to do what I'm thinking about...

I've been reading a bit more about Mirth, it looks like it's possible to create an interface directly with a [PostgreSQL] database. I'm not sure yet if it's possible to automatically trigger messages out (for example when new patient is created), I'll try to investigate a bit more.

Anyway, Mirth looks like a very interesting project. If triggering can be done, then I'm sure integrating with it makes much more sense than reimplementing everything from scratch, as it's not just about creating or receiving messages, but the whole interface management (start, stop, error surveillance, message editing, etc)... In that case, properly documenting <how> to create these interfaces should do the trick just fine...

> I know Mirth as being an interface engine, not sure in which manner
> you integrate with it, can you also talk a bit to that? I do think
> that it would make sense for GNU Health to natively "speak" HL7, since
> it's kind of the de-facto language for so many ancillary systems
> (labs, radiology, modalities, pharmacy, etc.). With the upcoming
> "liberation" of the HL7 specs [0], I'm fairly sure better integration
> in this world would only be positive for GNU Health. But maybe you've
> got Mirth directly plugged in on the PostgreSQL database, as it
> appears to be possible (not familiar with that myself...)
>
> At the day job, I'm an interface analyst for a major vendor (of which
> I'd prefer to keep the name out of this discussion), and I'd like to
> be able to share my knowledge working on a FLOSS project. GNU Health
> seems interesting enough for this! Plus I just love Python ;)
>
> In case it's currently not able to interface GNU Health with other
> systems, I'd be glad to work with you on the design of this new HL7
> module. The goal would be to do that in an integrated manner, as you
> guys are the expert on the way GNU Health works, and interfacing
> requires ways to "plug in" the application, so in depth knowledge of
> the software is needed (which I obviously don't [yet] have ;) )
>
> Let me know!
>      +Emilien
>
> [0] http://www.hl7.org/documentcenter/public/pressreleases/HL7_PRESS_20120904.pdf