[Gnumed-devel] downstream provisions for invalid HL7, plus time zones

[Jim Busser]

Got this back, in answer to these questions, from the main path lab results 
provider for my region of BC.CA:

Begin forwarded message:

> Generally if there is some invalidity in messages, it's only one, not the 
> entire batch, so you may want to import everything but the 'bad' message.  We 
> have no issue with resetting one accession once the 'badness' is resolved.
> 
> As to the concept of inserting time zones, we haven't plans on doing so - we 
> don't get the information from the labs that send to us, which are all in the 
> same time zone as Excelleris; our assumption is that anyone accessing the 
> Excelleris report would understand that the reported on dates and the MSH 
> line date (message creation date) would be interpreted as our time zone.


So as per Luke's suggestion, it would seem sensible that ---  in the case of 
one or more syntactically "bad" messages --- the remainder in the file can and 
should be processed, since it is possible to later be sent "non-bad" messages 
without having to receive the originally "good" ones all over again.

As to time zones, should the script
- be hard-code for a time zone
- assume it should take its timezone from the server that is running the script
- take a "time zone" value from a per-praxis script configuration table?

-- Jim