HL7 Help

[garry r fisher]

Hi,

Can anybody help me with an HL7 issue?

I’ve been asked to add multiple specialties for a consultant into an MFN message. This was fine as I just used a repeating field:

|SPEC1~SPEC2~…..SPECn|

Unfortunately the third party want it as companants in a single field:

|SPEC1^SPEC2^…..SPECn|

What type of field data type would I use for this? Its similar to an address but can I use that data type for this?

Regards

Garry

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Garry,

I am assuming you are referring to field PRA-5 (00689) Specialty – 2.3.1 HL/7.

This is a CM type field so you can simply place the specialties in each component as you described. There is no need to change the field.

However, the standard length is 100 bytes so you might want to change that to assure you have sufficient room.

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[garry r fisher]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for this. Unfortunately the third party don’t want me to map it to PRA.5 but to STF.9 for some reason.

I’ve asked them whether it can be changed to what is the more obvious field.

Garry

[Dorian DiNardo]

Garry,

You could use the regsub command to change the & to a ^ for that particular field.

Dorian

[Charlie Bursell]

My $0.02

A change like this is best done with the string map command.

The problem is that sometimes you don’t know or care what the character is but you want to make sure it is what you want.  All you will deal with is the character at index 3, 4, etc.

If you use regsub, you never know if the character is a regsub special character.  For example, the ^ character is the character that anchors the expression to the beginning of a string.  To regsub it, you would have to escape it.  With the new regular expression engine, it is an error to escape a non-special character.

So you are better off to use string map which requires no escaping.  For example, assume you want to change the subfield separator to : throughout the message.

set msg [string map “[string index $msg 4] :” $msg]

Charlie

[garry r fisher]

Hi,

Thanks for the various suggestions. I’m still waiting for the vendor to advise whether they can change to the ‘real’ specialty field or not. Once I know then you have kindly provided me with enough guidance for me do what ever they require.

Thanks

Garry

[Jim Kosloskey]

Garry,

Even if the vendor does not comply, you can still place as many components in a CE type field as you want (limited by the size) within an Xlate.

You simply need to use the proper notation (such as: 0(0).PID(0).00118(0).[0] or .[1] or .[2] etc).

If you are obtaining the source specialty through an iterate, then possibly use the iteration counter inside the square brackets.

I have tested this (not the iteration part but it is worth trying) and the Xlate creates as many as I want (again considering the length).

I hope this helps,

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[garry r fisher]

Jim,

That’s great. I haven’t tried it but just looking at your example it should give me the solution I want without the use of addtional Tcl code.

I’ll give it a try.

Regards

Garry

[garry r fisher]

Jim,

Works a treat – thanks.

Garry

[Jim Kosloskey]

Garry,

That’s good.

Were you using an ITERATE to collect the specialties?

If so did you try using the iteration counter in the component portion of the field address path and did that work?

Thanks,

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[garry r fisher]

Jim,

No – the sending transaction had all the specialty’s in individual fields i.e.

SPECIALTY_1

SPECIALTY_2

…..

SPECIALTY_10

So I just had to map across each field.

Thanks again for your assistance with this.

Garry

[Author]

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