HL7 OBX segments to RTF

[Mike Whitaker]

We are looking for a way to create an RTF file from an HL7 message with multiple OBX segments and (eventually) with text formatting such as bold and tabs which will be sent in the HL7 message. We currently have TCL procs to take an HL7 message with multiple OBX segments and output it as an ASCII file but don’t have anything to create an actual RTF file. I found several references here about converting an ASCII file from an RTF or sending RTF in an HL7 message but nothing about creating an RTF from an HL7 message.

Thanks

Topic

[Robert Kersemakers]

Hi Mike,

Are you sure you want to do this? In my opinion RTF is crap…

We have a few interfaces where RTF-texts were send in an HL7 message, or where we picked up an RTF-text as a file and processed it further. When we sent the RTF-text to the destination system, this destination system didn’t output all of the RTF-tags. It seems there are different versions of RTF. So I had to get rid of several RTF-tags so the destination system would output the RTF better, though still not perfectly.

How about you send the incoming OBX-texts as is (with possibly text formatting) and have the destination system decide on how to output the text and add some formatting to it?

On the other hand, Cloverleaf is very versatile, so there are some RTF tcl-libs out there. This is one of them: http://www.flightlab.com/cost/ratfink/. You should be able to make an RTF-text with this lib; I haven’t used it myself though.

Zuyderland Medisch Centrum; Heerlen/Sittard; The Netherlands

[Mike Whitaker]

I really don’t want to do this but the vendor will only accept ASCII, RTF or DOC (MS Word) files. We currently send them ASCII files but then they lose all of the text formatting. Thanks for the info, I will take a look.

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