Ignoring Duplicate HL7 Messages

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.

HL7 Simulator – Command Line Tool

Did you know that Iguana ships with a very handy tool that can be used to test – even stress test – your interfaces?

Along with the Windows HL7 Simulator GUI tool that many of you are probably familiar with, Iguana also includes a command line application – located in the Chameleon install directory – that can be very useful when testing your environments.  Both tools have recently gone through an extensive overhaul process and are now more powerful, descriptive and useful than ever.

The command line tool has been around in our Windows builds for a little while now, and recently we’ve added it to our Linux distributions as well.

HL7 Demo – The Movie

For the past several months, I’ve been conducting the majority of our online product demonstrations. I’ve gotten to speak personally with so many of our customers. It’s been a lot of fun and a great learning experience. As a developer, it’s extremely eye opening when you start seeing exactly how our products are used once they get into the customer’s hands.

Despite all these great things, this morning I was thinking about the one negative. Specifically, the repetition the presenter – in this case, me – has to go through to perform these demos. Generally speaking, our demos walk customers – very thoroughly – through a typical interfacing scenario from start to finish. A lot of the process is the same each time we go through it. I’ve always wondered if things would be easier if we offered a series of video-based demos that could be watched – on-demand – followed by a meeting to discuss and answer questions.

At the heart of that question is this simple fact: While our typical demos range anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes, the core process of creating a functional interface can actually be completed in about 10 minutes!

Getting Started with Iguana 4.0

So, you’ve seen the announcement, read about all the improvements and even visited our blog – what’s next?

It’s time to upgrade to Iguana 4.0!

Upgrading to Iguana 4.0 is easier than ever.  For most, upgrading is simply a matter of downloading Iguana – and running our installer.  The installer will not only upgrade both Iguana and Chameleon, but it will also automatically backup and convert your existing Iguana configuration files to our new consolidated format.