​​​​​HL7

Healthcare organizations rely on standardized specifications for their business transactions. The HL7 standard was developed to address clinical and administrative healthcare transactions. Typical HL7 implementations present unique challenges:

  • Customizable standard
  • Thousands of transactions
  • Implementation-specific validation needs
  • Ordered processing and ordered delivery
  • Tracking and reprocessing messages

The CCI Tec services for HL7 have evolved because of our successful end-to-end implementations. Our goal is to develop integrated HL7 solutions that are robust and easier to maintain. CCI Tec develops HL7 schemas and delivers an architecture that meets your needs:

  • Messaging in XML or HL7 format
  • Simple APIs
  • Fast message parsing
  • Rules-based validation, from levels 1-7
  • Extends existing .NET integration platforms, such as BizTalk Server
  • Enable full interface monitoring, reporting, and real-time exception handling

HL7 Services for Health Plans and Providers

The CCI Tec HL7 services focus on BizTalk Server and the BizTalk HL7 Accelerator, which enable a powerful HL7 messaging environment that is critical to healthcare organizations (http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/accelerator-hl7.aspx).

Business challenges include: simple solutions to ordered message delivery, meeting crucial FIFO requirements, archiving metadata, monitoring transaction-level trouble-shooting, and scaling up processing. Rapid deployment of interfaces that leverage the BizTalk Server Business Rules Engine (BRE) and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) facilitate our clients’ business processes.

Previous client engagements include Prometheus Labs, Park Nicollet, Healthcare Partners Medical Group, and University of Utah Academic Medical Center.

The CCI Tec End-to-End Solution

CCI Tec uses an Agile approach for project implementation. Agile development methodology provides measurable progress toward the project goals through needs assessment, gap analysis, design, development, and deployment.

Needs Assessment and Gap Analysis

During the needs assessment phase, the client’s business-level objectives are identified. We interview the project stakeholders, collect interface requirements, and initiate the project definition process. A targeted set of priority transactions is selected for a pilot project.

The goal of the gap analysis is to determine the current state of the client’s messaging environment.

Design Phase

Our approach to the implementation is a project plan that addresses the data from the needs assessment and the gap analysis. We work with our clients to determine a workable team composed of client resources and CCI Tec resources that will lead to timely completion of the project. We want our clients to understand how the the business objectives can be achieved through our Agile project plan.

The client deliverables for the design phase of a project are the requirements document and the project plan.

Development Phase Some of the tasks in the development phase tasks include the following:

  • HL7 versions 2.x and 3.x and customization
  • BizTalk Server mapping
  • Business rules for routing messages and acknowledgments
  • Basic exception handling
  • Testing, Remediation, and Deployment

Once the system can run test messages with sample data, the troubleshooting process begins. Message processing is rigorously tested. The final process of deployment and go-live is where CCI Tec excels. Our experience enables us to deliver system security, reliability, and professional documentation to make the client hand-off a smooth transition.