HL7 field delimited message and Cloverleaf

[Sam Craig]

We just recently got “bit” again because a field was being truncated, because of the field length.

Easy fix, just increase field length in HL7 layout.

Does anyone know why Cloverleaf uses field lengths for delimited messages?

It seems to go against the purpose of having field delimited messages.

Who cares if field is 2 or 200 characters as long as delimiters are being used in the message.  😕

Thx,

Sam

Topic

[Shibu Mathew]

Sam,

If you look closely , you will see that each of the cloverleaf HL7 field length and type matches with the standard HL7 field length and type.

For ex: Message Control ID, MSH.10 has field length 20 and the data type is “ST”. If you look at the HL7 2.3/2.4 ADT specs (defined by hl7.org), you will find the same.

Thanks,

[Sam Craig]

Correct, I know it matches the HL7 standard, but some vendors seem to ignore the standard.

The engine we used here many years ago did not care about field lengths for delimted messages.  So, we never had truncation issues.

Anyway, thanks for your response.

Later,

Sam

[Shibu Mathew]

Sam,

you are right. I worked with eGate before and it does not use field length either. eGate uses the data types CM,CE,CN,CX et al, but there is no field length for hl7 messages. It is good to see that cloverleaf follow the HL7 standard so closely. At the same time, it also gives the flexibility to modify the field length, if needed.

If every sending/receiving system follow the hl7 standards, there won’t be any need to change the field length in the engine.

Thanks,

[Author]

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