BizTalk HL7 essential knowledge part 1

This is the first article with the most important Tips to start with BizTalk HL7 Message Protocol.

The important things are the HL7 messages structure and their meaning.

Existing many tipes of HL7 messages, ADT, ORM, ACK, ADR and all of theme are compose of segments and fileds.
Below the most important segments (MSH, EVN and the last the MSA for acknowledgment protocol features)

MSH segment:

MSH.1 – is the Field separator, the default value is |

MSH.2 – Encoding characters, the default value are  ^~&

MSA.3 – Sending application,the BizTalk adapter use this field to identificate the party membership.

MSH.4 – The sending facility, this is the version of delegate port for send the message, this field is optional.

MSH.9 – The message type, diveded in three parts:

the value type of message, for example ACK for acknowledgment , ADT for patient registration and around that, ORM and so on.

trigger event (ID), this is the event type,for example A01 for Admit/visit notification, A31 for update person information.

message structure this is the identification of message structure.

MSH.10 – Message control ID

This field is really important in HL7 because it is the message identification code,
it is used in the HL7 system to trace the acknowledgment in the MSA segment.
The  MSH.10 is the reference to make correlations messaging with HL7 without to use body message fields.

MSH.11 – Processing ID
Process ID, this field is composed of processing ID (default value P) and processing mode (always Null value)

MSH.12 – thi is the version ID, is composed of three elements , version ID, internationalization code and Internal version ID, usually is used the first and for example in BizTalk the value could be 2.3.1

There are less important fields:
MSH.13 Sequence Number and MSH.14 Continuation Pointer

More important are:
MSH.15 Accept Acknowledgment Type
MSH.16 Application Acknowledgment Type

Used to set acknowledgment type from receiver

EVN segment:

EVN.1 – Event Type Code, type code event, for example A01 ADT/ACK – admit a patient , A04 ADT/ACK – register a patient.

EVN.2 – Recorded date/time ,the time and date of the trasmission transation

ENV.4 – Event reason code, is really important to specify the reason of trasmission transation, for example in the message type ADT^A08 , could be set to AGG for Update patient informations , SNM for changing doctor.

MSA segment, is the segment of an acknowledgment message, and the fields are:

MSA.1 – Acknowledgment code
acknowledgment code, AA for Application Accept, AE for Application Error etc.

MSA.2 – Message control ID
is the message control ID from the sender

MSA.6 – Error condition
for the error code and description

In the next article the work around HL7 adapter and schemas.

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