Author Archives: Art

Book your Iguana 5 training today

 ·  by Art  · Leave a comment

My team and I just published a small but important update to the iNTERFACEWARE website:  The ability to book and pay for your training sessions online!

I know, I know — it’s probably not the most exciting website update ever, but for the dozens and dozens of people who are signing up every month for our Toronto-based Iguana 5 training sessions, I know it’s going to be a real time saver.

The feedback from the trainings has been amazing.  We’ve even managed to get a few people on camera talking about their experience, so I’ll post those here in a week or two.  The great thing about the videos is that you get to hear first hand just how advantageous it is to come visit us, learn about Iguana and share ideas with the other participants.

Anyway, if you want to book your session – for both Iguana 5 Training and HL7 Training – just visit the link below.

http://www.interfaceware.com/training.html

Can’t wait to meet some of you in person!

–Art

Translator Training in Toronto

 ·  by Art  · Leave a comment

…Try saying that three times fast!

Or better yet:  join us for one of the in-depth Iguana 5 training sessions that we’ve started offering on-site in Toronto.

It’s been a few weeks since we kicked off our inaugural session and I can tell you that the entire experience was a huge success.

Training people is not only about simply showing features, rules or workflow.  It’s really about finding ways to make the content relevant to the problems the participants see in the real world.  That’s why training here at our Toronto office makes for such a complete training experience.  On top of the fantastic curriculum our team has put together, having the training here means access to the various skills and experience the iNTERFACEWARE team has to offer.

With this first session under our belt, we’re now gearing up for a number of Toronto training sessions — which are selling out rather quickly — and we invite all customers and potential customers to book a spot today.

Understanding the fundamentals of Iguana 5 and the Iguana Translator, along with learning from the experts about ideal implementations, can significantly decrease deployment times and can make the difference between delivering a project over-or-under budget.

Have a look at our training agenda and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.

Cheers,
-Art

 

 

The Return of Internet Explorer

 ·  by Art  · 1 Comment

Yes, it’s true. With the latest release of Iguana, version 5.0.9, Internet Explorer 8 and 9 are now officially supported (again)!

For those of you who read our blog and/or our wiki, you probably know that we have a bit of a love-hate relationship with IE around the office.

Editor’s Note: Since this article was published there was a recount and it’s actually just a hate relationship: the first ballot was confusing to some of our more “senior” team members.

Anyone with experience in web development can tell you that supporting IE – particularly the older versions like IE6 and IE7 – requires a significant amount of trickery, hacks and effort. That support often means sacrificing development hours that could be spent on features, innovations and optimizations. It’s a burden that many developers would be happy to live without.

That’s why, a few years back, we saw a surge in anti-IE campaigns springing up across the web. You may remember campaigns like:

http://www.ie6nomore.com
http://hey-it.com/

That was a fun grassroots movement which was embraced by everyone from small start-ups all the way up to the likes of Google.  Within the healthcare IT and enterprise world however, it’s definitely a case of easier-said-than-done.

When you’re dealing with major institutions and hospitals, it’s occasionally impossible for the individual user or the integration team as a whole to use anything other that IE. So, while on a personal level we might not love IE, today we are releasing the latest version of Iguana with support for IE8 and IE9. We’ll continue listening and working to ensure all of our corporate users – including those who run IE – are able to take advantage of Iguana and all of the amazing features of the Iguana Translator.

We’d love to hear from the community though. What do you think? Is IE still the dominant browser in your office? Is it IE8 or IE9 – or are you still using the dreaded IE6?

You can download Iguana 5.0.9 today. Happy browsing and integrating!

-Art

What if… HL7 was truly made easy?

 ·  by Art  · 5 Comments

Today, we here at iNTERFACEWARE are very pleased to announce the launch of our newly redesigned website: http://www.interfaceware.com

The first thing people seem to notice from our website – and the same goes for our appearances at trade shows and other industry events – is our tag line: “HL7 Integration Made Easy“. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had that have started with: “…you had me at Easy!”.

One of the things we’re most proud of here at iNTERFACEWARE is the fact that we’ve been able to make HL7 workable, understandable, implementable, … and even easy for our customers.

For those who are just starting their HL7 explorations and may be wondering, “How do you make HL7 easy?”,  I thought I’d put a new video together to help you get started.

What does an HL7 message look like?

 ·  by Art  · 10 Comments

When I created my first animated video – How does HL7 work? – I never imagined it would have the reach and impact it did.  In the few short weeks since it was released, the video has found its way onto dozens of corporate blogs, industry publications and personal sites.  It seems the interest in HL7 – especially when explained in plain English – is very high!

As the comments rolled in, a number of viewers requested a more technical HL7 overview video.   Not wanting to disappoint my “fans”, I thought I’d give it a shot.

It’s a good thing I’m always up for a challenge because as much as I love HL7 – and really, don’t we all – creating an HL7 tutorial to explain an HL7 message’s pipes, carets, tildes and ampersands isn’t exactly an easy task.

Have a look at my follow-up video – What does an HL7 message look like? – and let me know what you think.  Did I manage to capture the important elements of an HL7 message in a fun way?

How does HL7 work?

 ·  by Art  · 20 Comments

Whenever I travel for work, one of the most common questions I hear is “How does HL7 work?”

HL7 is not always one of the sexiest subjects, but as interoperability and connectivity continue to be huge drivers in the health care space, the questions of HL7 are going to continue to be asked.

So, after a little thought, I thought I’d create a fun – and hopefully useful – video describing what HL7 is and what it does.

Sending HL7 Messages – The Movie

 ·  by Art  · 3 Comments

In keeping with our goal to provide the best possible service, documentation and support to all of our customers, I thought I’d take some time to create a second video in my “The Movie” series.  A sequel, if you will,  to the original: HL7 Demo – The Movie.

This time around, I wanted to show the creation of an outbound HL7 interface but was hoping I could “jazz” up the process a little while showing the ease of our tools.

The video only runs about 7 minutes, but in that short amount of time, I’m able to take the data from my database, map it into HL7 messages and configure Iguana to send my HL7 feed out to a receiving application (in this case, the HL7 listener).

HL7 Training and Certification

 ·  by Art  · 4 Comments

Updated: This post lead to a number of requests for HL7 and Iguana Training.  We’ve recently updated our website to offer online registration for both and more information can be found here:  Iguana and HL7 Training

Last week I had the pleasure of traveling to Boston, Massachusetts to attend the HL7 Educational Summit.   The summit and the instructors were fantastic and it was great to spend time talking with the other participants.  For those unfamiliar, the HL7 organization offers various forms of HL7 training and HL7 certification.  During the educational summits, you can sign-up for 2 full days of classes followed by an optional certification exam.  The classes are quite intense and it’s highly recommended that you read Chapters 2 and 2A of the standard before arriving.  Unlike our training – which is geared towards real-world design and implementation - I think the educational summit classes are best suited for people who – like me – are interested in understanding the micro-details of the standard.

This year, I thought I’d brush up on my HL7 v2.6 knowledge, so I signed up for the classes and even elected to take the HL7 v2.6 Control Specialist certification exam.  Nothing like the fear of an exam to make sure you pay attention during class!

HL7 Integration on 64 bit Windows

 ·  by Art  · Leave a comment

Started    : Monday, June 1st, 2009 @ 11:02:43 AM
Duration   : 17 minutes 3 seconds
Hostname   : WinBuild64
Build_ID    : WinBuild64/2009-06-01_11-02.Iguana_64
Source DateTime: 2009-06-01 15:02:46 UTC

Complete Success!

… but, what does that actually mean?

It’s the result from one of our successful builds of the 64 bit version of Iguana on Windows.  Dmitri – one of the very talented developers who works hard behind the scenes here at iNTERFACEWARE to make all your HL7 integration dreams come true – did a fantastic job of putting together this latest 64 bit build.

If you’re interested in being one of the first to try out Iguana 4.1 (beta) on 64 bit Windows, you can find the latest build on our ftp site.

http://dl.interfaceware.com/iguana/windows/snapshot/

Ignoring Duplicate HL7 Messages

 ·  by Art  · Leave a comment

Sometimes – regardless of how advanced our software, hardware and networks become – it’s the simplest of problems that give us the biggest headaches.

That was the case for a few of our customers recently.  After taking the time to build, test and deploy their interfaces, they were faced with a situation they hadn’t prepared for:  What to do when duplicate messages were sent to one of their channels?

This may not seem like a huge issue when a message is accidentally sent twice – but imagine what would happen if, like a broken record, that same message was sent 100, 1000 or even 1,000,000 times.  That’s a lot of needless stress to place on your database when all you’d be doing is updating an identical record.