Emailing HL7 message

[Gary Atkinson]

Hello-

I writing a tps proc to a kill a message base on a field OBR4:1 and then email the HL7 message.  I have been successful in both cases, but I have an issue with how the hl7 message looks in the email body.  We are on version 5.5 rev1 and operation system is AIX 5.3.  Here is my proc:

Code:

proc tpsRAD_invalid_alias { args } {
   keylget args MODE mode               ;# Fetch mode

   set dispList {} ;# Nothing to return

   switch -exact — $mode {
       start {
           # Perform special init functions
   # N.B.: there may or may not be a MSGID key in args
       }

       run {
   # ‘run’ mode always has a MSGID; fetch and process it
           keylget args MSGID mh
           set msg [ msgget $mh ]
           set segmentList [ split $msg r ]
           set newmsg [ join $segmentList n ]
           puts “Message joined by newline: $newmsg”
           set segment [lindex [ lregexp $segmentList ^OBR ] 0 ]
           set fieldsep [ string index $msg 3 ]
           set fieldList [ split $segment $fieldsep ]
           puts $fieldList
           set OBR4 [ lindex $fieldList 4 ]
           puts “This is OBR4: $OBR4”
           set OBR4_1 [ string range $OBR4 0 1 ]
           puts “This is first two characters of OBR4: $OBR4_1”
           set email_subject “Invalid Cerner Radiology Order Alias Received”
           if { [ string equal $OBR4_1 “CD” ] } {
               set msgdisp “KILL $mh”
               system echo “$newmsg” | mailx -s “$email_subject” gatkinson@bwmc.umms.org
           } else {
               set msgdisp “CONTINUE $mh”
           }
           
         
           

           lappend dispList $msgdisp
       }

       time {
           # Timer-based processing
   # N.B.: there may or may not be a MSGID key in args
       }
       
       shutdown {
   # Doing some clean-up work
}
   }

   return $dispList
}

I tried sending message with segments join as (r) and also as (n), but both cases I always get this in the email body:

Code:

MSH|^~&|HNAM|ARUNDEL|CHARGES|STAR|20071128093049||ORM^O01|Q24865496T168
MSH|94335||2.3
PID|1|1028681^^^^^STAR|1028681^^^^^STAR||CONTROL^TEMPORARY^LAKOF||192304
PID|1|21|F|CONTROL^TEMPORARY^LAKOF|1|6 SUNRISE CT^^GLEN
PID|1|BURNIE^MD^21060^US^^^02|02|(410)236-4577|NONE|E|W||730600009^^^^^S
PID|1|TAR|5467896|||||||||Not of Span/Hispanic||N
PV1|1|Inpatient|CCU^CCU^06^BWMC^^^NAH|Direct|||1058^Badro,
PV1|1|Inpatient|M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim|||CAR||||*Phy
PV1|1|Inpatient|Ref/Home|||1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro,
PV1|1|Inpatient|M.D.^Bassim|IPA||1|||||||||||||||||||BWMC|||||2007110215
PV1|1|Inpatient|1400
PV2||C||||||||0|||CD:28952855||||||||||^^589723
ZVI||||CHEST PAIN NOS|||||2
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|^Costanzo^Jennifer||105
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|8^Badro,
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro,
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|M.D.^Bassim|NAH
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|Pharmacy||2007112809304
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|5|||Written^Written|^Co
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|stanzo^Jennifer
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085||CD:28989428^IR Needle Bx/Special
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085||Procedure||||||||CD:312689^Standard
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085||Precautions|||Rad Type&Rad Type|1058^Badro,
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085||M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro,
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085||M.D.^Bassim||||19781737|CD:28799302|20071128093046|
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085|||CD:28907525|||1^^0^20071128093000^^R|||CD:319451|^
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085||Tumor

What have others done to email HL7 messages as they come into the engine?  And does anyone have any ideas why segment names repeat?

Thanks for you time!

Gary

Topic

[Robert Milfajt]

Yes, we had this problem back in August.  I have the fix for you, but I do not remember why I did this.  Funny, you look at the problem, remember fixing it, find the fix and then say to yourself, what the frell was I thinking.  Here is a snippet of a proc I created called Printable_Msg, that takes a variable containing what is returned by the [msget $mh], and massages it so it prints correctly!  It looks like I converted all hard returns to new-lines, adds a space before each segment and after each new-line, but for the life of me I do not remember why I added the spaces.

Code:

proc Printable_Msg { msg } {
       regsub -all r $msg n msg1
       regsub -all {^(…)} $msg1 ” \1″ msg2
       regsub -all {n(…)} $msg2 “n \1” msg1
       return $msg1
}      

Hope this helps,

Robert Milfajt
Northwestern Medicine
Chicago, IL

[Chris Williams]

If the destination mail reader is on a PC, it is expecting to see a CRLF pair (rn) as the line termination. If you are trying to read with Windows Outlook, you need to go to

Tools / Options / Preferences / E-maiil Options

and uncheck “Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages”

[Gary Atkinson]

Thanks Chris that worked!  😀

I love microsoft  🙄

This what it looks like now in outlook:

Code:

MSH|^~&|HNAM|ARUNDEL|CHARGES|STAR|20071128093049||ORM^O01|Q24865496T16894335||2.3
PID|1|1028681^^^^^STAR|1028681^^^^^STAR||CONTROL^TEMPORARY^LAKOF||19230421|F|CONTROL^TEMPORARY^LAKOF|1|6 SUNRISE CT^^GLEN BURNIE^MD^21060^US^^^02|02|(410)236-4577|NONE|E|W||730600009^^^^^STAR|5467896|||||||||Not of Span/Hispanic||N
PV1|1|Inpatient|CCU^CCU^06^BWMC^^^NAH|Direct|||1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim|||CAR||||*Phy Ref/Home|||1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim|IPA||1|||||||||||||||||||BWMC|||||20071102151400
PV2||C||||||||0|||CD:28952855||||||||||^^589723
ZVI||||CHEST PAIN NOS|||||2
ORC|NW|IR-07-0000085|||Ordered||||20071128093000|^Costanzo^Jennifer||1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim|NAH Pharmacy||20071128093045|||Written^Written|^Costanzo^Jennifer
OBR|1|IR-07-0000085||CD:28989428^IR Needle Bx/Special Procedure||||||||CD:312689^Standard Precautions|||Rad Type&Rad Type|1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim~1058^Badro, M.D.^Bassim||||19781737|CD:28799302|20071128093046||CD:28907525|||1^^0^20071128093000^^R|||CD:319451|^Tumor

[Robert Milfajt]

And I wrote code to fix this…   😳

Robert Milfajt
Northwestern Medicine
Chicago, IL

[Gary Atkinson]

Yes Robert thanks for your suggestion as well 😆

I’m lazy so I took the outlook suggestion first  😉

[David Barr]

I’m trying to figure out what’s going on from your examples.  In the first instance, a new line starts wherever you have a new segment, but any segments longer than about 72 characters are cut off.  

It’s hard to tell exactly what is going on in your second message.  It looks like lines are getting wrapped if there is a space in them, but otherwise they are still being truncated.  If you want to avoid all truncations, I’d advise changing this code:

Code:

system echo “$newmsg” | mailx -s “$email_subject”

to this:

Code:

system echo “$newmsg” | fold -w 70 | mailx -s “$email_subject”

This will cause all lines to wrap regardless of whether or not they contain spaces.

[Gary Atkinson]

Thanks David for that tip as well!  

I thought HciConnName returned the name of the thread, but when running this proc in the engine I see its returning the process .  Is their a global variable that contains the name of the thread where the tcl proc is used?

[Charlie Bursell]

processname_xlate IS the name of the Xlate thread so HciConnName is giving you exactly what you asked for.  If you want the the name of the thread that is sending to the Xlate thread you can get it from the metadata of the message.

[Gary Atkinson]

Thanks Charlie  8)

[Gary Atkinson]

I found the thread name in SOURCECONN.   😛

[Author]

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