HL7 FEBRUARY 2001 UPDATE 

Health Level 7 is the voluntary healthcare industry standard that allows different types of IT systems to communicate and share data.  Both HL7 Inbound and Outbound involve using standardized segments to transmit data, enabling the multitude of healthcare software products to “speak the same language.”  During the past quarter, the Arrendale Interface team has continued to coordinate many HL7 interface projects.  Most commonly, such interfaces involve HL7 (Health Level 7) interfaces to or from various other hospital applications.

An HL7 Inbound interface allows patient demographics from HIS systems such as IDX, Keane (First Coast), Eclipsys and others to populate TAź templates for faster and more accurate transcriptions.  Hospitals already using TAź Document Creation in major departments have utilized Inbound HL7 integration to automate the management (viewing, faxing, printing, storage) of ancillary transcriptions created in other systems.  For instance, pathology transcriptions created by DHT’s CoPath system are being brought into TAź at Southern Maryland Hospital, located in Clinton, MD via HL7 Inbound.  TAź has been used in Southern Maryland’s Medical Records department since 1998.  Does your health system have ancillary transcriptions they would like to view, sign and route through TAź? 

HL7 Outbound interfaces are more common and are used to send or store transcriptions to other hospital applications such as repositories, PACS systems and bedside care products.  Mary Rhew,  Systems Programmer and nine year TAź liaison with Porter Memorial Hospital in Valparaiso, IN details some of her recent experiences with HL7 by sharing the following:

“To say we had some HL7 projects is a little bit of an understatement.  During the last 4 months time frame, I implemented the Cloverleaf Engine on December 2^nd, 2000 , going live with:

          McKessonHBOC Series to Sunquest    -  ADT, ORDERS

          McKessonHBOC Series to Pyxis         - ADT, ORDERS, ORDER PROFILE

          Sunquest to McKessonHBOC Series  - ORDERS, CHARGES, RESULTS

          Pyxis to McKessonHBOC Series       -  CHARGES, FLOOR STOCK LOADS/UNLOADS,

 QUERYMESSAGES

Then 2 weeks later I implemented:

          McKessonHBOC Series to McKessonHBOC Care Manager - ADT

          Sunquest to McKessonHBOC Care Manager - RESULTS

          TAź to McKessonHBOC Care Manager  - TRANSCRIPTS"

Per Mary, "I am having TAź send me everything (HIM, Cardiology, ER, and Radiology transcripts).  Transcripts not needed are filtered in the Interface Engine.  Most Care Manager sites just send Radiology transcripts.  We elected to send all the transcripts so our physicians could see all their reports with one click of the button while they are in Care Manager.  This has been very well received by the physicians."  To conclude, Mary adds, "The TAź interface was VERY easy to implement and Ed Cannon at AAI was great to work with.  He answered any questions I had with a more than acceptable response time.  Out of all of the interfaces I implemented in the last 2 months, TAź was the smoothest implementation and with all that was implemented at one time, it was a good thing.”

If Mary’s experiences at Porter Memorial have you inspired, an HL7 interface may be the ticket to maximize your information systems hardware and software expenditures.  AAI’s Transcript Advantage HL7 technical specifications are available via e-mail to our customers interested in getting more out of or into TAź.  Call or e-mail Nancy (877 452-5700 or nancyf@aaita.com) at AAI to request HL7 specs and pricing information.

Feb 2001 TAź News