Can we export data from OpenEMR to HL7?

OpenEMR Development
1

avantsys wrote on Wednesday, July 10, 2013:

It’s as simple as that. Can we create a .txt file with HL7 data from inside OpenEMR to transfer it elsewhere or not? And if yes, how?

Thank you.

2

mdsupport wrote on Thursday, July 11, 2013:

Your question is too simple / broad. Since HL7 is just a standard, community will have to incrementally build specific processes to accept and output communications in HL7 format.

So far thanks to Rod Roark’s contribution, you are able to exchange HL7 files with Labs.

3

avantsys wrote on Thursday, July 11, 2013:

Here’s the deal:

The Greek state has developed three internet-based applications for e-prescribing, e-diagnosis and e-billing that are not compliant to any of the main international standards (they chose to re-invent the wheel), and, until fairly recently, they flatly refused to provide an API or anything. So, the few doctors that had purchased EMR software for their practices simply could not exchange data with the state’s services.

They had to either retype or copy/paste whatever they entered (demographics, diagnosis, prescription and billing) - and do it thrice, as they had to re-enter the data they had already entered in the application they had bought for their practice separately: Once in the e-prescription application, once in the e-diagnosis application and once in the e-billing application. I’m not going to write what I think of this, but suffice it to say that the management of the semi-private, semi-public company that maintains these applications used to say they were not planning to provide software developers with an API or standards for exchanging data - ever.

Now, they say they want private clinics to start sending HL7 files to the state’s e-billing website (.txt files with HL7-formatted information) by the end of July and, to make things even more difficult, they still haven’t finalised their requirements regarding what these files should contain.

4

yehster wrote on Thursday, July 11, 2013:

This code is not part of the official base, but I have written code to generate HL7 for syndromic surveillance.


As part of it, I wrote an HL7 message class

5

mdsupport wrote on Thursday, July 11, 2013:

If July EOM is target and only outbound HL7s are needed, it would be quick to do a mapping of emr table/view(s) to HL7 segment(s). Then a simple concat_ws in MySQL will do wonders and give you most flexibility to put together a full message.

6

tmccormi wrote on Thursday, July 11, 2013:

Kevin,
Can we bring your code in? The syndromic stuff is more acceptable than what we have since it’s based on CDC test format which should be acceptable in all states now. And, of course a good hl7 class library is an important standard, versus “hand rolled” per need.

7

weesnerkim wrote on Wednesday, July 17, 2013:

This looks good. I have code that creates CDA documents using several RIM domain models and have been working on D-MIM messaging protocol. We need to put all this stuff together and get it in.

Kim

8

yehster wrote on Wednesday, July 17, 2013:

I’ll put it on my “TO DO List” for after the 4.1.2 release.