I’m starting to go through my lists to decide what I should write about first – and what I kept coming back to was my own personal list of HL7 Tools and software.
HL7 Tools List
The reality of HL7 is that it is really not “that” tricky of a standard – it’s just not that complex. If you have a simple HL7 need – say, receiving simple HL7 ADT messages and saving the results to a database – and you only need to connect to one vendor to receive this messages, you really have a number of choices to building your interface. If know know a little something about software design (coding), you just might be able to create a script to process the message and post the information to your database. This is great – for now, but what happens if your vendor changes the way they send their HL7 messages? Maybe they want to move to v.3.0? What happens when your boss tells you that you need to expand your department and start connecting with sites across the country? Do you have the man-power to keep rewritting and modifying you script to handle all the new sources? Did you add a robust logging and management system originally so that you can now monitor all of these new incoming HL7 feeds? Changes are no.
So, the next step you can take is to look at the open source HL7 solutions, like the Mirth Project. The Mirth Project has been growing in popularity recently, but personally, I’m still more than a little skeptical. Firstly, the first time I tried to install it (and I should mention that I am a software developer) it took me hours to get things up and running and then I found that making new connections was a very difficult task. Then, after a little playing – once I start to see some potential in the product – I started looking in to their support structure. That’s when I realized that Mirth wasn’t anything close to free! They have one of the single most expensive support contracts of all the HL7 tools I’ve come across.
So, I started looking in the other companies and tools that I’ve heard of in the past;
Neotool
Interfaceware
Orion
BizTalk
Microsoft BizTalk HL7
HL7 Integration Engine
Orion Health / HL7
I’m not going to tell you which one of these is my favorite (though if you’ve ever talked to me, you know which one I adore), but they are all major players in the HL7 world and worth looking in to.
Furthermore, the site that I go back to time and time again to find out what HL7 tools and products are on the market is: http://www.hl7.org.au/HL7-Tools.htm
The owner of that site has done such a fantastic job at listing just about every major and minor HL7 tool that’s on the market today. Trust me, if you want a crash course in HL7 tools, go to the link above, do a little reading and then just go through, contact some of the companies and request a demo. The great thing about the HL7 space is that all the companies seem very willing not only to sell you their product 
– but also to help educate you on HL7 in general and how it can help you with your current problems.
So, what are you waiting for? I’m still going to post information about HL7 (maybe some sample interfaces built using many of the tools mentioned above), but when it comes to HL7 tools, I really think the site above got it right. I’m not one to reinvent the wheel, so instead, I just thought I’d share my private list with the rest of the world.
Good luck.
#1 by Brent at June 2nd, 2009
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Hey, I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know about a new HL7 tool that you might like to try.
We just released it – it’s available at http://www.hl7spy.com. It addresses a lot of the issues that we were having as developers and integrators (dealing with large collections of messages, analyzing messages and providing statistics, searching sorting and merging collections).
We’d love to have some folks in the industry try it out and give us some feedback – if you get a chance, any input at all would be appreciated!
Regards,
Brent Hands
http://www.Hl7Spy.com