Hey Guys, We have written parsing for ascii type data (inhouse and external labs)and I do some atomic manipulations (or for non techno types break the results into their parts) on in house labs. This mechanism is external to OpenVPMS but cos OpenVPMS is such a joy to work with, once the parsing is done, adding it into histories as pretty attachments is pretty easy.

However this is exactly what Tony describes as constantly reinventing the wheel. My solution is completely at the mercy of providers changing their formats, reporting styles etc etc etc.

It would be bloody great to come up with a industry standard HL7 parser utility that sits between the provider and consumer. It would serve EVERYONE! Lab providers, software vendors, oh, I almost forgot, and us the end consumer... It may fall to the OpenVPMS community to be the leaders in this regard and if we can find the resources, hope our industry follows us.

Matt Costa

On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:28:31 +1000, steve isaacs

wrote:

> Hi Tony, I have been rattling on at a few of the bigger vendors of vet > path gear. > Had a pretty quick response from Abaxis and they have no HL7 now or > any plan to do so. They export exclusively as ASCII. Though they have > a plan to modify one of their suite (the Biochem machine) to export xml. > To date IDDEX have yet to reply. > > I am at melb Uni ICU and getting pretty keen to move us away from > endlessly writing results on charts. Our radiometer blood gas supports > HL7 2.5. We also deploy abaxis biochem and Haematology and an IDDEX > vetscan for some limited tests.. > > Abaxis have offered to supply details of how to access their > interface, if you are interested I will forward on the contact details. > > all the best > steve > > On Sep 10, 2009, at 5:27 PM, Tony De Keizer wrote: > >> Hi Steve, >> >> Definitely looking into this approach for the next phase of the >> investigations management system. I am all for using proven standards >> rather then constantly reinventing the wheel. >> >> Some of the things we will need to do to achieve this is develop a >> tool to >> render the hl7 content into a better format so easier to read as a >> whole >> report. I.e. Store as raw HL7 so we can get access to the atomic >> data but >> allow users to display the hl7 in a format suitable for clinicians >> to read. >> As most practices are used to reading a nicely formatted (red out of >> ranges, >> graphs, scatter plots etc) view of the results I think this is >> important. >> >> Although most Pathology companies send both the atomic results and a >> text >> representation of the report in the HL7 the text representation has >> little >> or no formatting. From reading the HL7 2.3 standard this doesn't >> have to be >> the case as HL7 2.3 supports EC (Encapsulated Data) so html, pdf , >> even >> image data can be sent in a hl7 message. Unfortunately not many labs >> actually utilise this feature. >> >> The other pity is many companies have already developed the parser >> to do >> this but they are all proprietary or imbedded in download >> applications or >> the like. This means each software provider has to develop this hl7 >> parser >> which is non trivial. Its' a pity one of the companies doesn't put >> this out >> into the public space to promote hl7 use in our industry ... we can >> only >> hope :-) >> >> While we are at it I should have a gripe about the internal lab >> Equipment >> manufacturers as well. It would seem they have a similar approach >> as they >> make every software supplier build and maintain sometimes complex >> interface >> applications in order to get the results from their equipment into a >> form >> suitable for upload into the Practice Management System. I have had >> the >> displeasure of looking at the interface specifications of these >> units and >> trying to decipher how to get even the most simple of data >> consistently and >> reliably. The interfaces are often poorly designed and >> implemented. Some >> of these purposely make it difficult so to limit interfacing to a >> fixed set >> of software systems. Even newer models with networkable PC's still >> limit or >> make it difficult to get access to the raw as well as formatted data. >> >> If Lab equipment suppliers where forced to provide HL7 interfaces >> like X-ray >> providers are becoming forced to provide DICOM interfaces we would >> be a lot >> better off. >> >> Anyway look for HL7 support in many parts of OpenVPMS in the near >> future. >> >> Cheers >> Tony >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> OpenVPMS User Mailing List >> users@lists.openvpms.org >> To unsubscribe or change your subscription visit: >> http://lists.openvpms.org/listinfo/users >> Posts from this mailing list can be viewed online and replied to in >> the OpenVPMS User's forum- http://tinyurl.com/openvfu > > _______________________________________________ > OpenVPMS User Mailing List > users@lists.openvpms.org > To unsubscribe or change your subscription visit: > http://lists.openvpms.org/listinfo/users > Posts from this mailing list can be viewed online and replied to in the > OpenVPMS User's forum- http://tinyurl.com/openvfu >

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