HL7Spy 1.1 User`s Manual
Contents
1. The figure above shows the Receive HL7 via MLLP dialog which allows setting of the options on of Receiver side communications These options are enumerated below 1 Welcome Port This is the port which HL7Spy will use to welcome HL7 Senders to connect and send data 2 Note You can configure as many HL7 Receivers as you wish however each must have a different Welcome Port configured 3 Network Interfaces This option does not usually need to be set It s purpose is to prevent HL7Spy from listening on a particular Network Interface For example if you didn t want the Receiver to be able to accept connections on the 192 168 0 199 interface in the figure above then this interface could be disabled by unchecking the checkbox adjacent to this IP address 4 Specify File By default HL7Spy will receive messages into a temporary file that is generated by the OS When the application is shutdown this file will be deleted If you wish to receive the messages into a file that will not be deleted on shutdown you can check this option and enter a file name in the textbox 5 Message Framing This option allows configuration of the bytes that HL7Spy Reference Introduction amp Overview O QHL7Spy User s Manual the receiver expects to encapsulate the HL7 message The standard protocol is to prepend the message with 0x0B and to append Ox1C0x0D to the end of the message and does not usually need to be changed Howeve2. 1 Messages in a given file have been saved in a different order from how they were received You have opened several files into a single Message Tab using the Open Folder feature see Opening More than 1 File on page 12 In this case the files are not likely to be opened in the correct order and the messages in the Message Tab will be out of order You have Merged to Message Collections into a new collection and wish to order the messages in the new message collection by the Control ID MSH 10 so that they are in time sequence order You want to find the largest message in a Message Collection 23 QHL7Spy User s Manual 24 The search dialog can be displayed by clicking on the button or by using the keyboard short cut Control F In either case the following dialog is displayed Sort Messages Message Sort Order Default MSH 7 MSH 13 MSH 10 Patient Name PID 5 1 1 PID 5 2 1 Control ID MSH 10 Message Offset Sequence Number MSH 13 Message Size Patient ID PID 3 Don t Sort Custom Sort Sort Expression Syntax path ASC DESC C Open results in new tab Message Sort Order The radio button options provide some of the more common sort orders that one might want to use For example the radio button Default MSH 7 MSH 13 MSH 10 sorts all messages in a Message Collection by Message Control ID then by Message Sequence Nu
3. Search Type matches if the search text is exactly equal to the text found in specified path Not Equal Search Type matches if the search text does not equal to the text found in specified path HL7Spy Reference Sorting Introduction amp Overview 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 O QHL7Spy User s Manual Null Search Type matches if the search text is found to be null at specified path Not Null Search Type matches if the search text is found to be not null at specified path lt Search Type matches if the search text is found to be less than the value found at specified path This search type is most useful for HL7 Date Time data types gt Search Type matches if the search text is found to be greater than the value found at specified path This search type is most useful for HL7 Date Time data types Field Length Search this search option allows you to search for fields with sizes that are less than greater than or equal to a specified value Find Prev finds the previous message that matches the specified search criteria Find Next finds the next message that matches the specified search criteria Find All finds all messages that matches the specified search criteria and puts these messages into a separate message tab The first question you might ask is why would you want to sort messages There are a few scenarios where this is useful
4. message index the active message current index current index 1 Current Message Index the current message index is the active message or currently displayed message in the message editor The current message index can be edited by clicking on the textbox or hitting Control G Goto and typing in a value between 1 and the number of items in the message collection Total Number of Messages displays the total number of messages in the active message collection _ Next Message make the next message in the message collection the active message current index current index 1 Goto Last Message moves the current index to the last message in the message collection HL7Spy Reference O QHL7Spy User s Manual Editor Toolbar 15 Change 19 Co 11 Component KOR 3 Close File 7 Clean up Statistics Se mange ET Delete sn 5 Sort Messages i 4 soma Insert Message 1 Open File Messages 9 Receive i keg 17 Message Message N HL7 Properties Before y Y i y y v 3 Bi Lal bero 6 Merge o Field 48 Display 22 Insert 2 Save File h 8 Send Ranieri LL using amp Message 4 Search HE7 dd PS 16 Change After 12 Add Message ie Paste 24 Message Watch Framing bk Error 1 Open File Opens a new file in a new tab See section Opening Introduction amp Overview File s on page 11 2 Save File Saving allows
5. Goto 10 Next Match Match First 8 Current Message Message Message Index i Change Navigation Bar Position toggles the position of the Navigation Bar from being docked on the bottom or top of the Message Editor window 2 Previous Match displays a message matching the search text in 3 that has a message index less than the current index If no text is Introduction amp Overview 15 QHL7Spy User s Manual 10 11 16 present this button behaves the same as 7 Quick Search entering text in this textbox and hitting the enter key will find the next message in the message collection that contains the specified text Hitting the enter key subsequent times will repeat the previous search Text within the message body that contains the specified text are highlighted in yellow to make them easily visible Next Match displays a message matching the search text in 3 that has a message index greater than the current index If no text is present this button behaves the same as 10 Message Scroller provides course grain navigation through a large message collection Moving the scroller 25 of the way along its track will move the current index to a value equal to 25 of the total number of message in the message collection _ Goto First Message moves the current index to the first message in the message collection Previous Message make the message previous to the current
6. through how to send HL7 from one Message Tab to another Section Send HL7 MLLP on page 26 describes this feature in more detail 4i Receive HL7 Sets up HL7Spy as a HL7 Receiver using the Minimal Lower Layer Protocol MLLP protocol as defined in the HL7 HL7Spy Reference Introduction amp Overview 10 11 12 13 O QHL7Spy User s Manual 2 x standard The tutorial section of this document see section Error Reference source not found on page Error Reference source not found walks you through how to receive HL7 from another Message Tab acting as a sender Section Receive HL7 MLLP on page 28 describes this feature in more detail Field Statistics Provides statistics for a specific HL7 Field for all messages in a Message Collection This is a very powerful feature of HL7Spy because it gives you the distribution of all values found in a given field If you are integrating two systems together this is invaluable information This functionality can also be accessed by holding down the Control key and double clicking on a field in the Message Editor by right clicking a field in the Message Editor and selecting the Field Statistics menu option or by selecting Tools Calculate Field Statistics from the main menu The tutorial see section Error Reference source not found on page Error Reference source not found walks much of this functionality If you have not taken the tim
7. search dialog can be displayed by clicking on the button in the toolbar or by using the Control F keyboard combination A screen shot of the search dialog is show below and a description of each of its options follows SampleHl7 zip Data hl7 Search 9081717170630 90992 Path PID 3 Restrict To Path Like Equal Null O lt NotLike NotEqual NotNull gt Field Length O O O gt 22 Search text to be searched for This field is not applicable and is disabled for Null Not Null and Field Length searches Restrict To Path If this option is checked then the search text and search type apply to the field specified in the Path textbox otherwise they apply to the full message You will notice that some search options are disabled when this option is unchecked Path defines the logical position of the field within the message to which the search criteria will be applied For instance if the path was set to PID 5 2 then the search criteria would apply to the patient s first name and not the entire message Clicking on the word Path causes the active path in the message editor to be populated in the adjacent textbox Like Search Type matches if the search text is contained within the message or specified path Not Like Search Type matches if the search text is not contained within the message or within the text found at the specified path Equal
8. HL7 windows are always bound to a specific message collection In the figure above it is bound to the SampleHl7 zip Data hl7 Message Collection as can be seen by the title bar It is worth noting here that like other windows that are docked in this location this window can be pulled to the desktop by clicking the title bar of the window and dragging and dropping it to the desktop In order to communicate with an external system select an existing configuration in the Destinations drop down list 1 If there are no 26 HL7Spy Reference Introduction amp Overview O QHL7Spy User s Manual destinations in this list or you wish to configure a new destination click the Add Destination button and the following dialog will be displayed Add Edit Destination Name men End Point mr Host localhost _ l Port 12000 Encoding Message Framing Standard HI Frame Start Ox0b Frame End 50x1c50x0d Encoding Westem European ISO iso 8859 1 The purpose of each of the settings in the Add Edit Destination dialog will be described next 1 Name Allows user s to set the name of a particular destination like Test System 1 or Product System SH2 End Point An end point uniquely identifies an external TCP IP application in this case an HL7 MLLP receiver It is comprised of both a hostname Host and a network Port It should be noted that an IP addres
9. Inner Harbour Software HL7Spy 1 1 User s Manual Nov 11 2009 DRAFT Table of Contents Introduction OLETTE REE 5 FANE 11 ao eee cceee cece cece eee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaeaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeesaeaaaeceseceeeeeeeeeeees 5 HL7Spy OVS EE RER 5 User Interface ViVi Wiscasset eee dct ones See eceeaneeebeloaezstbeds 7 KE Sa EST ckeateisasi cscs titi ncdenteunlacaand eases shensnewahaiemancancideacd 7 ML SPY Referente ee EEA E R E 11 Opening FINS S sactaresiarceise sons cecemesnauciacel dnsnaanetasseetepntelinsdansnideateadenteaccsgaicics 11 Message UO aat 2a cerberehckectzasdecabel pancardbesicedestandeue sites 14 Advanced il Le 0 gt Jr 35 Message FAM add cab apecndecesedacee 35 Keyboard ko ge EE 37 Introduction amp Overview Audience We assume the readers of this manual are fully familiar and comfortable with HL7 messaging In this manual we explain HL7Spy and all its associated concepts and terminology in detail but we do not explain topics that are part of HL7 proper For information on HL7 see www hl7 org HL7Spy Overview HL7Spy is a productivity enhancement tool for individuals working with HL7 2 x messages HL7Spy was developed for a group of HL7 Analysts working for a large provider of Radiology Information Systems RIS Their job was to integrate the company s Radiology Work flow product with the hospital s IT infrastructure If you are familiar with HL7 and have had the opportunity to analyze HL7 mes
10. an be disabled by clicking on this button _ Change Character Encoding Use this option to change the character set that HL7Spy uses to display messages Message Framing Messages within a stream such as a file are identified with a start signature and an end signature In HL7Spy this is called Message Framing This option allows control over how HL7Spy interprets the start and end of a message See section Message Framing on page 35 for more details _ Message Properties Hex Editor displays a hexadecimal display of the current message in the Message Editor as well as some information about it s character encoding the file the message belongs to the message offset and size and whether it has been modified or ny not Section on page covers this feature in more detail Show Messages Using Standard Encoding HL7 allows messages to be encoded using characters other than the beloved amp characters found in most HL7 Messages Why anyone would use characters other than these is beyond understanding however the standard permits it If you are used to seeing messages using the standard encoding characters your brain gets used to viewing and automatically parsing this format Switch the encoding characters and your brain suddenly has a very difficult time processing what it sees Enabling this feature the default automatically displays any message using the default encoding It does not chang
11. changes made to a message collection to be persisted to disk HL7Spy always saves the contents of a message collection to a new file Clicking on the Save File toolbar button displays the following dialog which provides control over the location and format of the files being saved Save File SsampleHl7 zip Data hl7 As File Format Message Framing Standard HI Frame Start Ox0b Frame End Ox1c Ox0d Encoding Western European ISQ iso 8859 1 File Path C Data00 hl Cancel Save When the Save button is clicked each message in the message collection will be written to the file specified in the File Path textbox using the specified character encoding The Frame Start Frame End specify how messages are delimited By default Standard HL7 Message Framing is used with each message preceded by the byte 0x0B and proceeded by 0x1C0X1D This results in messages stored with the following format OBMSH 1CODOBMSH 1COD 17 O QHL7Spy User s Manual Close File Closes the active message tab Files can also be closed by using the File Close menu option clicking on a tab with the middle mouse button or using the Control Q key combination _ Search In addition to the Quick Search functionality provided in the Navigation Bar HL7Spy provides another more feature reach search tool See section Searching on page 22 for more details 21 Sort Allows messages
12. d Message text Ctrl Shift Down Quick Find Next Ctrl Shift Up Quick Find Previous Ctrl Shift H Highlight specific field within the message 38 Keyboard Shortcuts Introduction amp Overview O QHL7Spy User s Manual File Ctrl N Open new message tab Ctrl 0 Open File Ctrl X Close File clicking on the message tab with the middle mouse button will do the same Ctrl Shift X Close all files Ctrl S Save File Ctrl H Open file with the hex editor Miscellaneous Ctrl Shift W Add current selection to Watch List Ctrl Space Show statistics for selected component Ctrl Shift SpacShow statistics for selected field e Ctrl Mouse Hovering over a field with the Ctrl key pressed will display a tooltip with the field description 39
13. d the next Null value Holding down the Control key and clicking on the text Null will move the Message Editor to the previous message with that field being NULL Unique Shows the number of unique values found for the selected field in the active message collection In the above example there are only 3 unique values M F and U No SEG Where SEG represents the segment name of the selected field This number describes how many messages in the active message collection were missing the segment of the requested field This is of course slightly different then what is tracked in the Null field since having a segment and the value being NULL is different than not having the segment at all Field Value Grid These are the unique values for all messages in the active Message Tab for the specified field As can be seen from the figure each value has a count labeled as Num and a length labeled as Len The default order of the grid is from most common to least common value however this can be changed by clicking on one of the columns of the grid In the example above there are 5149 messages for female patients 4863 messages for male patients and 16 messages where the technologist couldn t determine the patients sex All fields have a length of 1 as you would expect for this field an All Button Clicking the All button will cause HL7Spy to create a new Message Tab containing all messages where
14. dminis 15 INT 43 Insured s Administ 15 NK1 15 Administrative Sex IS PID 8 Administrative Sex IS STF 5 Administrative Sex IS Tool Area 2a 21 Er IF Ane A 18 eg Bea ed A Ae 2a mi eum an vart 17 0990101010000 ADT ang Tre gt nNEn 1 10000 sage Collection SEIBERT GALE MATT Tab Overflow 0328 MI NK1 1 SEIBERT FauSTO SPENCER CPNP Fa v 9 9786 WANSER JEREMIAH ETHAN MD DR 479 36 HL7 Standard Path Description Type Max Table Code Description GT1 9 Guarantor Adminis 1S 7 0 1 HL700E A Ambiguous IN1 43 Insured s Administ 1S 1 1 HL7000 F Female NK1 15 Administrative Sex 0 1 HL7O0C M Male PID 8 Administrative Sex 5 0 1 HL7OOC N Not applicable 0 STF 5 Administrative Sex IS 1 1 HL7000 O Other U Unk a Drag Tool Windows nenon i Out of the Tool Area gt EH segment Editor gg Watch ti Statistics FO HL stand rd A Custom Code th SQL Loader HI7SpyUsa 150 081 499 Tool Windows Message Offset Size Each tool in the Tool Area has a dedicated section describing its functionality however a short description of each follows 1 Segment Editor The Segment Editor provides a human readable view of the current segment in the Message Editor window Fields modified in the Segment editor are reflected in the Message Editor and vice versa Watch List Allows user
15. e HL7Spy Reference O QHL7Spy User s Manual The active Message Collection or active tab is used in context with many of the other tools within the application For instance the Segment Editor Watch List and Statistics View always show details for the active Message Collection Navigation Bar Messages in the Message Tab can be thought of as being stacked together one on top of the other as shown in the figure below meria innmat wsuis clanMi sem z Current Menn LAnMI cum Index MSH amp ADM SHM PID 1 908171717 LL LLI PV1 1 E P188 R14 11 NK1 1 WOODLIFF DIN1 Index N LI o LIMDCRITIITIIITI IIT ORC NW 90101010400 OBR 90101010400 o o Index 1 The first message is identified with an index of 1 and the last message with index equal to the number of messages in the current Message Collection The current index is the index of the current message being displayed in the active Message Editor tab The Navigation Bar is provided as a mechanism to quickly navigate through a large Message Collection It always operates within context of the active Message Editor Tab A description of each of its components follows 11 Goto Last 1 Change i 5 Message 7 Previous Message Navigation 3 Quick Scroller Message Messages Bar Position Search y HESE I gt iq 4 1 18000 P P 2 Previous 4 Next 6
16. e how the message is sent stored on disk or how it is sent out via MLLP just how it is displayed in the Message Editor Copy Message To Clipboard Copies the currently displayed message in the Message Editor to the clipboard L Paste Message Pastes the message currently in the clipboard into the current Message Collection When Paste Message is selected a dialog pops up and asks whether the message should be 1 inserted before the current message 2 inserted after the current message or 3 HL7Spy Reference Introduction amp Overview 21 22 23 24 O OQHL7Spy User s Manual overwrite the current message _ Insert New Message Before Inserts a new empty HL7 Message The new message is placed before the current message in the Message Editor _ Insert New Message After Inserts a new empty HL7 Message The new message is placed after the current message in the Message Editor Delete Current Message Removes the current message from the active Message Editor Note the message data on disk is not removed it is just removed from the visible Message Collection However saving the file will remove the message Message Error This icon is displayed if there was a problem parsing the current message in the Message Editor Hovering the mouse over the icon will give you an indication what the error is 21 QHL7Spy User s Manual Searching The
17. e to go through this section we recommend you do so now Section Field and Component Statistics on page 30 describes this feature in more detail i Component Statistics Provides the same functionality as 10 Field Statistics except the statistics are at the Component level instead of the Field level This functionality can also be accessed by double clicking on a field in the Message Editor by right clicking a field in the Message Editor and selecting the Component Statistics menu option or by selecting Tools Calculate Components Statistics from the main menu Section Field and Component Statistics on page 30 describes this feature in more detail Add Watch This button adds the field currently selected in the Message Editor window to the active Watch List The tutorial see section Error Reference source not found on page Error Reference source not found walks through a demonstration of this feature Highlight Fields by Field Name Use this feature to highlight a particular field by the name of the field For instance typing in 19 QHL7Spy User s Manual 20 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 doctor in the pop up dialog will highlight all the doctor fields in the message e g Attending Doctor Referring Doctor etc _ Field Tooltips By default tooltips are displayed when you move the cursor around or click on fields in the Message Editor Tooltips c
18. ecimal numbers in area 1 or characters in area 2 If changes to the message are made these changes can be committed to disk by clicking this button 2 Revert Changes This allows changes made to the existing message to be reverted Be aware that the Hex Editor does not provide undo levels as such reverting changes will revert back to the version that is currently stored on disk 3 L Search Provides hexadecimal and string search capabilities 4 Find Next Finds the next matching hexadecimal or string value in the current message 5 Goto Offset Allows entering of an offset within the current message The specified offset will be highlighted in the Hex Editor 32 HL7Spy Reference Introduction amp Overview O QHL7Spy User s Manual Display Options Auto 16 Byte 24 Byte and 32 Byte Controls how many hexadecimal byte pairs are displayed per line For instance selecting the 16 Byte option will display 16 hexadecimal bytes per line Auto will find the best fit based on the size of the Message Properties window __ Link To Message Editor If this option is selected the default as the Hex Editor will display the same message that is displayed in the Message Editor and will advance as the Message Editor is advanced Otherwise if the option is disabled the Hex Editor will continue to display the same message regardless of what is displayed in the Message Editor 33 Ad
19. er at the component level The tutorial see section Error Reference source not found on page Error Reference source not found demonstrates this difference quite well If you have not taken the time to go through this section we recommend you do so PID 8 Administrative Sex Anonymized txt Not Null 10028 Unique 3 Null 0 NoPID 0 1 e F Female 5149 1 M Male 4863 1 U Unknown 16 Find all messages with PID 8 U Next message with PID 8 U Previous message with PID 8 U Find all messages with PID 8 null Next message with PID 8 null Previous message with PID 8 null Show HL Standard Values for PID 8 now The figure above are the statistics for field PID 8 A description of fields and capabilities of this window follows 1 Title Bar The title bar of this window has the following information HL7 Field Path Name of HL7 Field Message Collection 2 Not Null Shows the number of messages in the active Message Tab where the selected field was not empty In the figure all 10028 messages had a value set for PID 8 HL7Spy Reference Introduction amp Overview O QHL7Spy User s Manual Null Shows the number of messages in the Message Tab that had an empty field In this example no messages had an empty value for PID 8 Note If there are fields with Null values you can click on the text Null and the Message Editor will fin
20. ile that is more than 50MB in size HL7Spy gives you the opportunity to reduce the amount of data that is read using the following dialog By dragging the scrollers you can control which section of the file will be read in HL7Spy will indicate the offset and size of the section of the file that will be read as well as the date range If the Continuous option is selected the data range is displayed while the scrollers are dragged otherwise the data range is displayed when the scrollers are released Having Continuous selected may perform poorly on a busy system It is also possible to limit the number of messages that are read in by setting a value other than zero in the Load First TextBox Partial File Load Dialog The file HL7Zdata txt that you are loading is 126 8 MB and may take a while to load If you don t require the entire file you can use the control below to limit the amount of data being loaded Drag to set start offset Start Offset End Offset Drag to set end offset gt Qftset 32 2MB to 79 1MB Size 46 9MB Range details I Fri 11 Jun 2004 04 08 00 PM Tue 15 Jun 2004 04 06 00PM C Continuous Load first 0 message found in range 0 All Limit the number of messages readin Summary Load all messages starting at offset 32 2 MB and ending at offset 79 1 MB If you do not wish to limit the data that is being loaded just click continue and HL7Spy will operate as normal HL7Spy wi
21. ing replacements are made the message conforms to a standard HL7 message which will be properly handled by HL7Spy Advanced Topics Keyboard Shortcuts Tool Navigation Ctrl Tab Switch Focus between the Editor and Segment Editor Ctrl P Open message property window for the selected message Ctrl E Show Segment Editor view Ctrl Shfit M Merge Message tabs Ctrl W Show the Watch List view Ctrl Shift S Sort Message tab Ctrl Shift R Generate watch list report F1 Show HL7 Standard view Message Field Navigation Ctrl Left Move to previous non null field Ctrl Right Move to next non null field Alt Right Go to next message Alt Left Go to previous message Ctrl Home Go to first message Ctrl End Go to last message Ctrl 0 9 Move to a specific field number Eg Ctrl 19 move to field 19 in the current segment Ctrl G Go to specific message index QHL7Spy User s Manual Message Editor Ctrl 1 5 Insert Segment Ctrl I F Insert Field Ctrl I R Insert Repeat Ctrl I C Insert Component Ctrl 1 T Insert Subcomponent Ctrl Delete Delete current Selection Ctrl Z Undo edit Ctrl Y Redo edit Ctrl Shift C Copy message Ctrl Shift V Paste message Segment Editor Ctrl Up Go to previous segment Ctrl Down Go to next segment Right Go to next field Left Go to previous field Ctrl T Toggle Show Empty Components and Show Empty Fields Searching Ctrl F Show Find Message dialog F3 Search Next Ctrl Shift F Quick Fin
22. ll detect and open the following files types Standard 0xObMSH Ox1cOx1d 13 QHL7Spy User s Manual Message Editor Message Editor Tabs 14 Single message in the file with no framing bytes e Carriage return separated messages e Carriage return with Line Feed separated messages Japanese framing omits the 0x0b character at the beginning of the message EGate log file format e Pyxis log file format e STC Datagate formats several flavors IDX ConnectR log format e Messages encoded in UTF16 format Message streams that have been compressed in ZIP GZIP or BZIP2 will be automatically uncompressed before loading If HL7Spy does not correctly open your HL7 file format please see the Advanced Topics section entitled Message Framing for details on how to configure HL7Spy to open more unconventional formats The Message Editor is the focal point of the HL7Spy application and as such has the most complex UI with the most features and options Most other tools within the application interact or are coupled in some way to the Message Editor window Many tabs can be open simultaneous Each tab in the Message Editor represents a collection of messages often referred to as a Message Collection in this document Messages Collections can come from e aFile e a TCP IP port e the result of a query against an existing collection e a Database query or generated programatically using the Custom Code featur
23. mber then by Date Time of the Message This is usually a pretty robust option to sort messages in their natural or received order provided that they come from the same HL7 source Message Offset This option will allow you to sort messages in a Message collection in the original order that they appear within a given file This is useful to revert a previous sort performed on a Message Collection Message Size This option is useful if you want to find the largest or smallest message in a Message Collection After sorting the smallest message will be the first message and the largest will be the last Custom Sort If the predefined field sort options do not have the sort criteria you are looking for you can always define your own The syntax of a custom sort is Field1 ASC DESC Field2 ASC DESC You will notice that if you select any of the other radio buttons except Message Size and Message Offset that the Sort Expression dialog is updated with the proper syntax so you have some examples to follow Open results in new tab If this option is selected the sorted collection is placed in a new Message Tab and the existing tab is left unchanged HL7Spy Reference O QHL7Spy User s Manual Merging Message Collections The Merge Message Collections dialog can be activated by clicking on the button in the Message Editor toolbar or selecting the Tools Merge from the main men
24. nce source not found there is a demonstration of HL7Spy acting as both by sending messages from 1 message tab the Sender to another message tab the Receiver If you have not already followed this tutorial we recommend you do so now It will give you a better feel for what is involved To active the Send HL7 window use the Tools Send Messages MLLP option in the main menu or click on the Send HL7 button in the Message Editor s toolbar Doing so will cause the Send HL7 window to be displayed to the right of the current Message Editor as shown in the figure below 3 Anonymized txt _ 1 SampleHI zip Data hl 4 Data hl7 vXx io Ca aa 41 5 s t 8 f Send HI SampleHl zip Data hl ax NSH c ADM SHM ALL ALL 20090101010000 ADT 208 I H5 20C New Entry localhost 12000 v PID 1 9081717170630 90992 SEIBERT GALE MATTHEW MME Options PVi 1 I P148 R6 B2 E 674 29 9786 VANSER JEREMIAH ETHAM SendFrom Stat Send From Curent Index NK1 1 SEIBERT FAUSTO SPENCER CPNP FA E Limit of Messages to Send IN1 1 UNIT HLTH 11 11 1 SEIBERT GALE MATTHEU MME a Display ACKs NACKs C AA AE AR Send MsgIndex 1 Accept A 0 Time sec 00 00 00 00 Failed AE 0 Errors 0 Failed AR 0 x Not Connected gt I4 4 1 18000 P PI l send Hi SampleHiz i PID S Patient Name F Send
25. of an HL7 message For the Standard HL7 preset we are using 0x0b as defined for the Minimum Lower Layer Protocol MLLP or HL7 over TCP IP Note It is possible to specify nothing here which is the case for some of the other presets Containing Besides the start of frame for a message to be identified as an HL7 message the text contained in this textbox must be found By default it is set to MSH but in a difficult to parse message stream it could be set to MSH amp or whatever encoding characters are being used End of Frame Defines the bytes in hexadecimal format that indicate the end of an HL7 message For the Standard HL7 preset we are using 0x1C0x1D as definesd for the Minimum Lower Layer Protocol MLLP or HL7 over TCP IP Summary Gives a summary of the message framing settings that were selected Replacement Strings Replacement Strings allow you to perform some message clean up when loading messages For example look at the ASCII Separators preset This preset is used for reading messages that are formatted as such lt 11 gt MSH lt 13 gt r rPID lt 13 gt r r lt 28 gt lt 13 gt A pretty awful format but HL7Spy can still handle it In the replacement strings section you will see that lt 13 gt is to be replaced with an empty string and r r 2 carriage returns is to be replaced with a single r This is done twice since some messages from this vendor have 4 r s in a row After the str
26. ptions cause the standard Windows File Open dialog to be displayed Multiple files can be opened by a holding down the Control key and selecting 1 or more files or by b holding down the Shift key clicking on a file in the list then while still holding the Shift key clicking on a file further down in the list to select a range of files 2 Dragging and dropping files from Windows Explorer to the HL7Spy title bar 3 Using the File Open Folder menu option This option displays the following dialog Which allows some specificity over which files in a particular directory are opened It is recommend to use Open Folder over options 1 or 2 if the number of files is over 100 Windows File Open dialog has some limitations on the number of files which can be opened whereas Open Folder can open thousands of files Open Folder Directory EN Files Search Pattern Regular Expression hI log Merge files into a temporary file before loading faster but works with text files only C Recurse subdirectories QHL7Spy User s Manual The options in this dialog are described here 1 Directory Specify the path of the folder where the HL7 message files are located or click on the folder icon to select a path 2 Files Specify the extension of the files to be opened More than one extension can be specified by separating extensions with a semicolon 3 Search Pattern Allows you to specify a regular exp
27. r there are some instances where you might need to modify the framing bytes A more detailed discussion of Message Framing can be found in section Message Framing on page 35 Once you have configured an HL7Spy receiver and selected the OK button in the Receive HL7 via MLLP dialog a message tab will be created with 0 messages The name of the tab is Mllp Welcome Port where the Welcome Port is the integer value set in 1 The HL7 Receiver message tab looks like the standard message tab that you would see when you open a file however this tab is bound to the configured network end point and is capable of receiving HL7 messages from 1 or more external systems To exit the HL7 Receiver just close the tab that is hosting it 29 QHL7Spy User s Manual Field and Component Statistics 30 When configuring or troubleshooting HL7 interfaces it is often useful if not always to know what values to expect in particular field what are the minimum and maximum lengths expected how often the value is null etc The Statistics Tool tab provides high level statistics for all messages and fields whereas the Field and Component Statistics UI displays more detailed statistics for an individual field or component The Field Statistics and Component Statistics feature share the same UI since they have identical functionality The difference being that the former provides statistics at the field level and the lat
28. ression that will be run on the text of each file If the regular expression finds a match the file will be included otherwise it will be ignored 4 Merge Files into a temporary file before loading If you know the files are text i e not gzip bzip2 or zip format then using this option will dramatically decrease the time it takes HL7Spy to open thousands of files 5 Recurse Subdirectories If selected files files in subdirectories of the selected directory will be included otherwise only files in the directory will be included By default tabs are displayed in the order of the first message in the tab This behavior can be disabled from the Options Order Tabs by MSH 7 Opening More than 1 File If you are opening multiple files at a time HL7Spy displays the following dialog This dialog allows you to control whether you want the files to be loaded into a single message tab or whether a tab should be created for each file If you choose to load the messages into a single tab then the options for controlling how the messages should be sorted are enabled Load Messages into Tab s Files Loaded 7 Messages 291 SortOrder Tab Per Fie Single Tab 12 HL7Spy Reference Opening Large Files File Types Supported Introduction amp Overview O QHL7Spy User s Manual Note HL7Spy automatically disables the Tab Per File option if more than 20 files are loaded at a time If you open a f
29. s can be used instead of a hostname In the figure above the hostname is set to localhost which has the equivalent IP address of 127 0 0 1 This is known as the loopback adapter and allows you to connect to a network service on the local machine On the HL7 receiver side of the communication the receiver is listening for connections on a specific application port The Port setting here must match that configured on the receive side Message Framing Message Framing defines how the HL7 Messages are encapsulated as they are sent out The standard protocol is to prepend the message with 0x0B and to append 0x1C0x0D to the end of the message Setting Message Framing is an advance topic and is covered in section Message Framing on page 35 Encoding Allows you to configure the character encoding that the HL7 receiver is expecting 27 QHL7Spy User s Manual Receive HL7 MLLP 28 HL7Spy has the ability to act as an HL7 Receiver and receive HL7 messages from external systems To initiate HL7Spy in receiving mode select Tools Receive Messages MLLP from the main menu or select the Receive HL via MLLP HI Receive Settings Network Interfaces Welcome Port 12000 192 168 0 199 1 192 168 1 4 192 168 200 1 v C Specify Fie Message Framing Settings Presets Standard I i Encoding Western European 150 iso 8859 1 v Receive HL7 from the Message Editor s toolbar
30. s to configure which fields are displayed for a message Up to 3 user defined message views are available Exporting and Report creation are also part of this tool Statistics View Provides detailed statistics of all messages in the active message collection Statistics are available for each message type for all message types as well as each field component and sub component HL7 Standard View Provides a search able reference to the HL7 2 x Standard including field names cardinality type and defined values Custom Code Editor This feature is a mini programming environment for developing custom functions Custom functions can be used to generate a CSV file of patient attributes matching some complex criteria file data into a database analyze complex message User Interface Overview Introduction amp Overview O OQHL7Spy User s Manual exchanges or any task that isn t directly supported by HL7Spy SQL Loader Provides a mechanism to retrieve HL7 messages directly from a database by writing SQL select statements The SQL Loader is able to automatically detect which column contains the message data and pipes this data to the Message Editor window HL7Spy Reference Opening File s For your convenience there are many ways to open a file in HL7Spy These are enumerated below 1 Using the File Open menu option Ctrl O or clicking on the Open File i button in the Message Editor window These three o
31. sages coming from different HL7 systems providers this can be a very non trivial task Site specific variations fields formatted incorrectly field lengths not adhered to missing required fields or fields put in the wrong location misinterpretations of the standard misuse of transaction types and short cuts taken by vendors are the norm not the exception As an analyst faced with the variability of HL7 and the often incomplete or inaccurate message definition provided by the customer the job of interconnecting two systems is a daunting task indeed This is where HL7Spy comes in HL7Spy has been designed to help HL7 analysts and programmers quickly interpret and characterize very large HL7 message streams It quickly reads in thousands of messages and provides detailed statistics at the message field component and sub component levels This information provides great insight into the nature of the message exchange and takes the guess work out of know which fields are filled in QHL7Spy User s Manual when and with what values HL7Spy also includes features for viewing editing search sorting sending and receiving HL7 retrieving messages from databases viewing messages in hexadecimal format and a host of other features that make HL7Spy an invaluable tool for on going maintenance and troubleshooting of HL7 interfaces 6 Introduction amp Overview User Interface Overview Main Areas of HL7Spy The figure below
32. shows the main areas of the HL7Spy user interface The two main regions of the Ul are the Message Editor region and the Tool region Each tab in the Message Editor region represents a collection of messages often referred to as a Message Collection in this document Messages can come from e aFile e a TCP IP port e the result of a query against an existing collection e a Database query or generated programatically using the Custom Code feature It is not uncommon to have 100 000 or more messages open within a single tab in HL7Spy The larger the sample of messages is the better chance statistically that you will find anomalies in the HL7 stream The Message Editor functionality is described in the next section in detail The second main area of the UI is the Tool area which contains some of the tools that are available for acquiring describing editing and manipulating messages in the currently selected Message Editor tab As shown in the figure below windows within the tool area can be pulled out of the tool area and moved to the desktop by clicking and holding the mouse button on the tab portion of the tool window Tool windows that are dragged to the desktop remember their position between invocations of the product O QHL7Spy User s Manual s3 HI7Spy New Edit Tools Options Help er Aw M an PID 1 Mes PV1 1i I Tabs Message Editor Path Description Type GT1 9 Guarantor A
33. the selected field equals the row selected in the Field Value Grid 6 In the example above clicking the All button would cause a new Message Tab to be created with all the messages where PID 8 has the value of U IP Field Value Navigation Clicking the left and right arrows buttons cause the message Editor to move to the previous and next message that have a field matching the value selected in the Field Value Grid 6 respectively 31 O QHL7Spy User s Manual 9 Right Click Menu Right clicking on a row in the Field Value Grid 6 displays a menu with search criteria available for the selected value Message Properties The Message Properties window displays a hexadecimal representation of a message within a Message Tab It can be accessed by clicking on the Message Properties button or by using the Control P shortcut 1 id 4D or Sa eset 30 IALLIALL 2009010 1010100 ADT A08 IHS 20090101010 100 01552 P 2 19 PID 1 908171717 7C 0814 103970 HEL WICK KRIS DARIUS A ACPNP 1973102 7IMI 118260 BAIRN SDALE WAY SAN DI EGO ESCONDIDO CA 92027 USAl 11111 IQ5N 4A5 574Q10Q5N Western European ISO iso 8859 1 C Program Files Inner Harbor SoftwarelHL7Spy SampleHl7 zip Data hl 16 384 480 The Message Properties dialog is shown above and its functionality is described below 1 Save Changes The data within the Hex Editor can be modified by typing either hexad
34. u As a result the following dialog will be displayed Merge Messages Select Tab Count SampleHl7 aip Data hl7 18000 Anonymized tst 10028 C Datak 18000 SortOrder Don t Sort Default MSH 7 MSH 13 MSH 10 Sequence Number MSH 13 Control ID MSH 10 Message Tab Selection The top portion of the dialog displays the currently loaded Collections To include or excluded a specific Message Collection just toggle the Select checkbox adjacent to the Message Collection For example in the figure above the messages from SampleHI7 zip Data hl7 and Anonymize txt will be included in the newly created Message Collection Data hl7 will not Sort Order This set of options control how messages will be sorted in the newly created Message Collection Only the most common sort criteria are available here To perform more complex sorting just click OK and use the more feature rich Sort Message dialog see section Sorting on page 23 Introduction amp Overview 25 QHL7Spy User s Manual Send HL7 MLLP HL7Spy has the ability to send HL7 messages to external systems using the HL7 Standard protocol known as the Minimum Lower Layer Protocol MLLP The MLLP protocol assumes there are two participants in the communication a sender and a receiver HL7Spy can act as either a sender or a receiver In section Error Reference source not found on page Error Refere
35. vanced Topics Message Framing If HL7Spy does not automatically detect the correct file format for a stream of messages it is possible to manual configure the message delimiters using the Message Framing dialog shown below Message Framing Ed SampleHl7 zip Data hl7 Common Presets Message Framing Settings Character Encoding Presets Standard HIZ v Encoding Western European 150 iso 8859 1 v End of Frame 0 1c 0 0d What Frames the Message Start of Frame Containin MSH lt 0B gt MSH lt 1C gt lt 0D gt ummary MSH vr Replacement Strings Replace unwanted strings String To Replace Replace ith Use Regex O Cancel Apply The Message Framing dialog allows you to configure both the Message Framing how each message is delimited in the file as well as setting the character encoding of the message stream The options of this dialog are described next 1 Presets HL7Spy has some predefined Message Framing configurations that are available when saving data send data via TCP IP and for loading files Selecting a preset will update the dialog contents so it is instructive to select a preset and see what differentiates its configuration from other presets in the list QHL7Spy User s Manual 36 Encoding Select one of the many character encodings provided by the Windows operating system Start of Frame Defines the bytes in hexadecimal format that indicate the start
36. within a Message Collection to be sorted by one or more HL7 fields or by message size offset Changing the order of the messages in the Message Collection affects the order in which messages are used in other parts of the application such as HL7 Send the Message Editor etc See section Sorting on page 23 for more details on message sorting _ Merge Message Collections Messages from multiple tabs can be merged together into a single tab using the Merge Messages dialog See section Merging Message Collections on page 25 for more information on how to use this feature Clean up Messages The Clean up Messages Dialog provides options to remove duplicate messages remove ACKs or messages that match a user defined specification from the current message collection A screen shot of this dialog follows The options should be self evident Clean up mesage collection Remove consecutive duplicate messages E Gate log files have these Remove ACKs where MSA 1 AA 4 AR C Remove where MSH 7 i LIKE J Path Match Operator Match Value Send HL7 Allows one or more messages in a Message Collection 18 to be sent to another HL7 system using the Minimal Lower Layer Protocol MLLP protocol as defined in the HL7 2 x standard The tutorial section of this document see section Error Reference source not found on page Error Reference source not found walks you
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