Make a live HL7 feed a batch to send to OV

[Ambur Tiller]

Has anyone ever had to turn a live HL7 feed into a batch file to send to another vendor? I need to take live messages and add a FHS (File Header) as well as BHS(Batch Header) segment to the first message, and a BTS(Batch Trailer) followed by FTS(File Trailer) at the end of the file.

Topic

[James Cobane]

Ambur,

One approach that we’ve used is to configure an outbound thread that writes the transactions to a file, then configure another inbound thread that reads that file as fileset-local, single message style.  You could then have an inbound tps on the fileset-local inbound thread that applies the FHS,BHS header and BTS, FHS trailers.  

InboundHL7 —> outboundFile               inboundFileset —> vendor

tcp/ip                 file (w/append)            fileset-local           ?protocol?

                                                         w/Inbound TPS

Hope this helps.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

[Charlie Bursell]

A Lot more overhead than needed Jim.  I do this a lot.

Configure the OB protocol as both UPoC Write and Read,  With a single proc, in th erun mode, append each message to a file.  When the read mode triggers, if set up properly, it should be time to batch the file and send it on.

Simple  😆

[James Cobane]

Charlie,

Thanks for the tip.  I’ll put that in the toolbox for future integrations – I may have to “bug” ya if I have questions 🙂

Thanks again.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

[Ambur Tiller]

Intresting. Thank you James and Charlie. I’ll give it a try.

[Ken Climer]

Ambur,

Did this work as you needed?  I only ask, as I’ve got to do the same thing.  Need to add the FHS/BHS & BTS/FTS segments to my outbound file, but am finding no success.

I had already tried using a file as the input, though could not find a way to get the outbound to have the FHS/BHS ahead of the MHS segments.  If you got this to work, I’m curious about the details.

I realize that there are details in this thread, but being entirely new to Cloverleaf I may be missing something in the translation.

[Ambur Tiller]

Ken,

  I dont know a whole lot about Cloverleaf as I am sort of new as well.  Meaning, I took the first class but I dont know tcl and I am the only one here who knows anything at all about Cloverleaf. My company has decided to get this done custom because they need it done fast. I am curious to know if you get it figured out though. Sorry.

[Beth Palmateer]

I have to ask: are you working with Meditech as the receiving system for these records?  There is a good possibility that we are going to be facing the same thing here, and if so, we will probably have to have custom work done also.  Ambur, it sounds like we have about the same setup here; one person responsible for Cloverleaf.  I went to Level 1 class several years ago but don’t know tcl because we just don’t need to use it very often.

[Vincent Tran]

I believe you can either append the batch header/footer segments in a post xlate TCL proc. Or modify the HL7 variant, and add the batch header/footer segments to the message. Then create an Xlate translating from one varient to the batch varient.

[Ambur Tiller]

Beth,

  You are correct! I am talking about working with lovely Meditech! Feel free to email me. Maybe we could talk sometime.  Meditech will only accept batch and we have 3 vendors that send live. They decided to do custom because  of the urgency and the fact that we need to satisfy 3 vendors and not just 1.

[Ken Climer]

Beth and Ambur — Yes, I also am trying to get this information to Meditech!

Vincent — I tried the variant, but adding the FHS and BHS segments doesn’t work as needed.  It wants to add them after each MSH segment for each message.  I need a single FHS, followed by the BHS… then the individual MSH, EVN, etc. for my messages.

It’s beginning to sound like a TCL proc, but not knowing TCL, I’d like to do this through Xlates wherever possible.

[Charlie Bursell]

Maybe I dio not understand the requirements here but unless each batch is to have a single message, the actual “batching” will have to be done outside of the Xlate engine.  How can you expect to hold multiple messages in Xlate while others are still coming in?

This is something we do quite often.  As I stated in this thread before, set up your OB thread with Protocol: UPoC.  Set it up as both read and write using the same Tcl procedure – one will run in the run mode and the other in the time mode.

As each message is sent through Xlate and delivered to the OB thread, the run mode of the Tcl procedure will simply append the message to a temporary work file.

The read mode of the OB thread will be set to run whenever it is time to send the batch.  You can use number of seconds, timer, etc.  When the read mode kicks off, you apply your headers and trailers to the work file and send it on.

Piece of cake  😆

[Beth Palmateer]

Hi, Charlie!  It just hit me – your “piece of cake” can either be made from scracth, if you already know how to bake, otherwise you have to buy from Sarah Lee….  I think the common thread here is that none of us are that adept at tcl to be able to add headers and footers to a file.

[Charlie Bursell]

Beth:

It is not that difficult although I would not like to post a solution here.  If I did I would spend the next month answering questions about it.  😥

As you are well aware, Cloverleaf does require a certain amount of Tcl knowledge.  Some see that as a bad thing, I see it as a good thing.  Otherwise how could we do a lot of the really wierd interfaces we do?

I guess that is why we recommend that employers hire IT professionals and pay them as such.  In other words, that why you get paid the big bucks  😀

If I can help, send me an e-mail

[Kevin Scantlan]

The Big Bucks?  Someone forgot to them that here.

[Russ Ross]

I’m like Charlie in that I’m not interested in answering questions like I was a part of your staff.

If you can follow this then good for you; otherwise, you are back to the Sara Lee receipe.

I have developed a couple of real-time to batch integrations that have run successfully for many years and this is how I did it.

If I had Charlie’s insights at the time I developed this model then I might of used a different approach.

I’m not even sure timer was a mode when I wrote this.

None the less, this has worked well for many years and it is simple enough that others on our integration team at MD Anderson Cancer Center have been able to use it with some guidance.

I configure the real-time outbound inteface to write num_files to what I call a que directory.

Refer to post my post at this URL

https://usspvlclovertch2.infor.com/viewtopic.php?t=1663&highlight=tpsfilesetoutbound” class=”bbcode_url”>https://usspvlclovertch2.infor.com/viewtopic.php?t=1663&highlight=tpsfilesetoutbound

to see how I use tps_fileset_outbound .tcl to create num_files in a que directory to be batched up later on.

FYI –

Russ Ross
RussRoss318@gmail.com

[Dennis Pfeifer]

My best suggestion is to purchase some professional services from Quovadx.

[Author]

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