Images through an interface

[Charlene Chaney]

This is my first time posting here, hopefully this is the proper place to pose the question.  

Has anyone heard of or have knowledge of technology that allows the sending of an image through an interface?

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Charlene,

HL/7 has provisions for sending images (not just file pointers to an image but actual images) built into the standard.

There is a field data type (I believe it is ED) which has a construct for sending images.

Both the sending and receiving systems are expected to play by the rules but don’t expect that to happen.

The reason for playing by the rules is that an image can contain separator characters (it is just binary data after all) and that can blow parsers.

By the way, the standard also has a description for defining the file pointers – but that is another story.

If you would like to discuss this in more depth feel free to contact me.

Thanks,

Jim Kosloskey

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

[Kevin Kinnell]

As bizarre as this sounds, the 2.3.1 HL7 standard (and probably later, I

haven’t pulled apart the 2.6 draft yet) has a very good explanation of how

Base64 encoding works in the ED section (2.8.16, table 0290).

The Canonical Way to get things turned into 7 bit harmless from 8 bit nasty

is Base64.

–kevin kinnell

[Author]

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