To receive patient and health information through the HL7 messaging standard, you can use a mapping template that's available in Data Integration. The mapping template requires source and target connections to read the HL7 messages. To run the mapping, you'll need to run a mapping task.
Perform the following tasks:
1Create a source connection.
2Create a target connection.
3Create a mapping using a mapping template. In Data Integration, use the mapping template called "Process incoming HL7 messages."
4Create and run a mapping task.
Step 1. Create the source connection
To receive HL7 messages, configure a source connection to access the HL7 data.
You can use one of the following types of connections:
•A flat file or an SFTP connection to a remote server
•A Kafka connection through an MLLP server to read HL7 data from a messaging queue
To enable and configure an MLLP server, use the File Servers page in Administrator. Set the target type to write the HL7 data to a Kafka queue. For more information, see File Transfer in the Administrator help.
Step 2. Create the target connection
To write the XML data to a target, configure a target connection.
You can use one of the following types of connections:
•A flat file or an SFTP connection to a remote server
•A relational connection if the relational database can store large objects that can hold XML data
•An MLLP connection to upload the XML data to a messaging queue
If you use an MLLP connection, you need to enable and configure an MLLP server before you create the connection.
To enable and configure the MLLP server, use the File Servers page in Administrator. You can set the target type to write HL7 messages to a flat file or to a Kafka queue. For more information, see File Transfer in the Administrator help.
Step 3. Configure the mapping
In Data Integration, use the mapping template called "Process incoming HL7 messages" and configure the mapping.
The mapping template uses a Data Services transformation that accesses a pre-built data service from the data services repository to parse HL7 messages. You can populate the mapping template with source and target data using the source and target connections that you created.
The following image shows the transformations in the mapping template:
The mapping template contains the following transformations:
1. Source transformation
The Source transformation reads an HL7 file as a source. You can use a flat file connection, an SFTP connection to a remote server, or a Kafka connection to access the HL7 data.
The source can be one of the following types:
- Single object
- File list to process multiple files
- Command if the files are stored on the same Linux machine that runs the Secure Agent
- Parameter if you want to specify the source in the mapping task
The source is parameterized in the mapping template, so you can perform one of the following tasks:
- Replace the parameter with a specific connection and source object in the Source transformation.
- Leave the parameter in the Source transformation and specify a source in the mapping task or use a parameter file.
2. Expression transformation
The Expression transformation uses the data in the HL7 file to construct the name of the data service.
Data services use the following naming convention:
The Filter transformation filters the incoming data from the Expression transformation to output only the final name of the data service that the Expression transformation constructs.
4. Data Services transformation
The Data Services transformation uses the name of the HL7 parser data service to access the data service in the data services repository. The HL7 parser reads the incoming patient and health information in the HL7 file and converts the data to XML format.
The mapping template sets the output type to buffer by default. If the output data is larger than the output precision, change the output type from buffer to file to avoid truncating the data.
5. Filter transformations
The Filter transformations filter the upstream fields to pass only the relevant fields to each target.
6. Target transformations
The Target transformations write the successful messages, failure messages, status codes, errors, and error flags to the target files. To write the data to the target files, you can use any target connection that writes XML data, such as a flat file, relational, or MLLP connection.
The target is parameterized in the mapping template, so you can perform one of the following tasks:
- Replace the parameter with a specific connection and target object in the Target transformation.
- Leave the parameter in the Target transformation and specify a target in the mapping task or use a parameter file.
Step 4. Create and run a mapping task
After you configure the mapping, create and run a mapping task to process the data flow logic in the mapping.
If you left the source and target parameters in the mapping template, you can configure the source and target in the mapping task.
In the mapping task, the Sources page appears if the mapping includes source parameters. You can add a single source object or multiple source objects based on the connection type and the mapping configuration. You can also configure a source filter. Similarly, the Targets page appears if the mapping includes target parameters.
