HL7 2.x formats

When to use HL7 2.x formats

HL7 is a messaging specification for healthcare information systems. Read more at https://www.hl7.org. Integrator can read and write HL7 messages in all 2.x formats. 

Read how to work with HL7 messages in Etlworks.

Creating format

To create a new CSV format, go to Connections, select Formats tab, click Add Format button and type in hl7 2 in the search field. 

Below are the available parameters:

• HL7 Version - specific HL7 Version. Any means parser will try to read a message regardless of the version, so if you don't know the version please select Any.
• Type of Encoding - the ER7 (default) is a standard HL7 pipe delimited format. The difference between HL7 XML and XML is that the former allows duplicated XML tags while the later does not. In most cases you will use ER7.
• Validate- if enabled Integrator will validate the message before passing it to the connector. If message is not valid according to the default rules, the appropriate error will be generated.
• Datatype if OBX2 Missing - if this property is set, the value provides a default datatype (such as 'ST', 'NM') for an OBX segment with a missing OBX-2 value.
• Datatype if OBX2 Invalid - if this property is set, the value provides a default datatype (such as 'ST', 'NM') for an OBX segment with an invalid OBX-2 value.
• Encode First Segment - if this property is enabled (default), when encoding a group where the first segment is required, but no data has been populated in that segment, the empty segment is now still encoded if needed as a blank segment in order to give parsers a hint about which group subsequent segments are in.
• Escape Subcomponent Delimiter - enable if subcomponent delimiters in OBX-5 shall be ignored.
• Enforce Encoding For - a comma-separated list of segments for which the system should enforce encoding even if they contain no content.
• Remove Encoding For - a comma-separated list of segments for which the system encoding should be removed.
• Namespace - the HL7 XML namespace. If not set the default namespace will be used: xmlns=urn:hl7-org:v2xml.
• Template - template in the HL7 2.x format. If this field is not empty Integrator will use it to populate column names and data types. Template is an optional field.
• Date and Time Format - a format for timestamps (date+time).
• Date Format - a format for date (date only, no time).
• Time Format - a format for time (time only, no date).
• Trim Strings - if this option is enabled, Integrator will trim leading and trailing white-spaces from the value.
• Treat 'null' as null - if this option is enabled, Integrator will treat string values equal to 'null' as actual nulls (no value).
• Preprocessor - use Preprocessor JavaScript to modify the raw HL7 message before passing it to the HL7 connector. Example:

• /* this code replaces all spaces in a message on underscore character */
  message = message.replace(" ", "_");
  

• Encoding - the character encoding used for HL7 documents in the XML format.