Re: [Health-dev] HL7 support in GNU Health

[Emilien Klein]

By the way, in case you haven't encountered it yet, there is a Python HL7 library available [0], which is also packaged in the PyPi [1].

It has unfortunately not had much development in the last 1.5 year, a few people (including me) have tried to improve on a fork of it but it hasn't been merged yet [2] (pull request got closed by the request creator, after no activity from the original developer).

At this point I would recommend using this fork of the library [3], which provides quite some improvements to more fully support the structure of HL7.

    +Emilien

[0] https://github.com/johnpaulett/python-hl7
[1] https://pypi.python.org/pypi/hl7
[2] https://github.com/johnpaulett/python-hl7/pull/1
[3] https://github.com/kevingill1966/python-hl7

2013/10/25 Emilien Klein <address@hidden>

Hi devs,

2012/11/23 Emilien Klein <address@hidden>
[snip]

>
>
> At the day job, I'm an interface analyst for a major vendor (of which
> I'd prefer to keep the name out of this discussion), and I'd like to
> be able to share my knowledge working on a FLOSS project. GNU Health
> seems interesting enough for this! Plus I just love Python ;)
>
> In case it's currently not able to interface GNU Health with other
> systems, I'd be glad to work with you on the design of this new HL7
> module. The goal would be to do that in an integrated manner, as you
> guys are the expert on the way GNU Health works, and interfacing
> requires ways to "plug in" the application, so in depth knowledge of
> the software is needed (which I obviously don't [yet] have ;) )

I've noticed that you plan to create a new module for HL7 [0]!

Since this is my day job, I like to be able to collaborate and help you build this new module. Have you already started thinking how you want to build that?

FYI in the task, you specify "Most requests are coming from the HL7 v2, so we'll start with that version." Just so you know, v2 is the most used *inside* healthcare organizations, namely for demographics, ADT, orders, scheduling, financials, etc.

v2 is basically character delimited text (most often | delimited), whereas v3 is XML. Newer applications (read: things that are under development, and thus not necessarily supported by much other systems) are usually developed with HL7 v3, but due to the complexity of the models (RIM, etc.) it's usually non-trivial to create new HL7v3 interfaces. Plus the fact that HL7 FIHR (the not-to-be-named HL7v4) is getting developed as we speak to get around the complexities of v3 ;)

Anyway, let me know how I can help.

I assume you would like to set down the foundation (being able to configure an interface, turn it on and off), and likely want to start out with an outgoing registration/ADT (admission, discharge, transfer) interface? I'd be interested in your plans!

Cheers,

    +Emilien

[0] http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?12909