I am quite new in the HL7 field and not a developer, so sorry if my question might seem to be too obvious.
We want to develop an app for a hospital which visualises performance and patient-flow data by aggregating data from other hospital applications. Our app will both visualise realtime data and historic data. During talks with the head of IT I got confused, he explained I need to:
Develop an HL7 listener like Mirth which can receive messages of other applications which communicate via HL7 2.x standards to catch realtime data and after this organise to migrate historic data from other applications via sql queries. Sounds pretty logic, though not sure if he's an expert since he had no idea what an API was and knew nothing about FHIR.
My questions are:
1 What triggers an application to send an HL7 2.x message around to other application when for instance someone changes the status of a patient? Is it programmed to automatically send a message with each change in record just randomly around? So assuming all applications do this standardly and you just need a listener like Mirth to catch those messages and migrate into my own database?
2 Can't I use the HL7 2.x standard to pull info via a query out of a database? Meaning can it be used for two-way communication? I send query, application sends me the data in an HL7 message? Meaning I can also use it to pull historic data from another database?
3 What kind of difference would the use of FHIR standard have in this situation? I believe it can definitely be used to pull information from another database. But would it in fact make a difference compared with the tactic which the tech guy is advising me, which is migrating historic data to my own database and further just catch new changes by receiving hl7 2.x messages?
4 Would it be an advise to use an FHIR RESTful API to pull/receive info from applications which still use HL7 2.x standard? So for both historic as realtime changes? Would this be a faster way of integration, or better to use the old fashioned way the Tech guy advises me.
Very keen to know more about this, since I want to organise a strategy which is future proof and won't cost months of integration time every time we migrate to a new hospital.
Thanks for your help guys!
depends on the application. most only send data, and it's configurable when and why.
no, you use hl7 v2 to pull data out of an application, not a database - if, that is, the application supports it. Many (most?) don't. And you can only do what the applcation allows
FHIR would be a lot easier to use, but it's still settling, and you'll have trouble finding applications that offer a fhir interface this year. you'll have to talk to potential customers to find out whether it's possible. btw, FHIR can do what v2 can in this regsard - both pull and push
it's always to advisable to use FHIR - if you can. mostly, though, you'll have to use v2 because that's what's on offer.