Category Archives: Videos

Burning V2 with FHIR in Mumbai!

 ·  by emuir  · 20 Comments

A little bit tongue in cheek! I think it’s safe to expect an abundance of bad puns over the next couple of years with the rising profile of the FHIR protocol.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about the FHIR protocol which is being spearheaded by Grahame Grieve.  It’s a protocol I have a personal desire to see become successful since it really hits home on addressing all the points I made in my now (in)famous post about the Rise and Fall of HL7.  That post was the first domino that set things into action.

I like simplicity and FHIR is the best thing to come out of the HL7 organization since the original version 2.X protocol. Other people have their opinions – I’ll just go and don my FHIR proof suit at this point… (haha, sorry I did warn you about all the puns).

Jayant Singh who is becoming a prominent blogger in the health informatics sphere immediately jumped in and demonstrated how FHIR could be implemented using C#.  Just for kicks I asked if he would be up to trying the same with IGUANA.

I was surprised – Jayant rose to the challenge! He downloaded IGUANA and a day later shocked me with a working FHIR demo – not bad after no experience in the platform.  Anyway Jayant and I traded code a little – I showed a few little tricks of how to package up his FHIR module neatly in Lua.  Jayant then went and produced a video.  I showed the video to Art my Communications Director who found some crazy service to put a voice over on the whole thing. Jayant polished it up and in record time we had the resulting video.  If you are curious as to what a simple FHIR interaction looks like this a very fast way to see it in action.

What’s neat about it is that it shows how easy this standard is to implement and how nicely it will play with the existing infrastructure of deployed HL7 Version 2.X technology.  This is not a standard which will take years to adopt – it will be possible to get fast benefits out of this puppy.

Here’s to Jayant – nice job!

HIMSS 11 Perspective: Eliot Muir

 ·  by mstjacques  · Leave a comment

Our very own CEO of iNTERFACEWARE, Eliot Muir sat down to talk with HIT Exchange Media at HIMSS 11 to discuss the importance and role of interfacing data systems in HIE with a particular emphasis on CDA.

 

Video Transcript

One of the things we are really kind of excited to look at is seeing the emergence of the CDA as a new business challenge that businesses are facing. I think the first stage of the meaningful use provision has got people generating CDA documents. Now generating a document, there is a fair bit of work in doing it but the real work is going to be when people start having to try to consume CDA documents from other vendors. I think we will get back into the same classic problem that interfaces usually reflect the structure of the databases that they feed from and so there’s going to be the same issues with CDA. So you might have a system that has heavy smoker, light smoker, non-smoker and another system says 5 packs a day, non-smoker, 10 packs and over 50. Invariably data is not stored in compatible formats in databases and that’s always reflected in interfaces. So, it’s going to be interesting in looking to see how as the meaningful use provisions go forward, vendors start having to try to interchange the CDA standard. We are ready to help with that if people are facing that challenge.

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Conversations From HIMSS11

 ·  by emuir  · Leave a comment

Now that I’m back and well rested from the whirlwind of HIMSS, I wanted to share some of what I personally experienced at the conference.

Firstly, I was quite taken aback by the overwhelmingly positive response that our new approach to integration received. The unveiling of the Iguana Translator platform was a great success! Out of over 500 people who visited our booth, I can count the number of people who didn’t like our new approach on one hand.

I had a lot of interesting conversations at the show.

I spoke with an integration engineer from Chicago, who had worked with Cloverleaf. She explained to me how her team found that they had much better maintainability and ease of development when they kept to the TCL scripting side of the engine rather than utilizing the graphical mapper. She expressed excitement about the concept of being able to see what code is doing as it’s being written as well as modifying interfaces from within a web browser.

What is Meaningful Use?

 ·  by mstjacques  · Leave a comment

If you have any relation to the healthcare industry in the US then chances are that you’ve heard the term meaningful use countless times and unless you’re heavily involved with healthcare IT then there’s a good chance that the term is confusing.

If that’s the case then this video is for you. We’ve been hearing the term meaningful use for two years now and it’s just as vague as ever for some of us and with the release of the stage one final rules a couple of months ago, the chatter only seems to be getting louder.

So for those of you without a highly technical background, I’ve created this fun and hopefully informative video that attempts to answer the burning question: What is Meaningful Use?

Enjoy.

What is Meaningful Use?

This video – entitled: “What is Meaningful Use?“, along with all of our existing – and future – educational videos can be found on the new site in our HL7 Video Vault.

– Mike

What if… HL7 was truly made easy?

 ·  by artharrison  · 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.

Transforming HL7 Messages – The Movie

 ·  by mdomiati  · Leave a comment

From Art:

Thanks to my newest video-recruit – Mo – we now have a new addition to our “The Movie” series of videos.  This time around, Mo explains how to easy it can be to transform HL7 messages using Iguana and Chameleon.

For those of you who’ve been waiting for a new animated feature from iNTERFACEWARE, don’t worry, I’m just putting the finishing touches on my newest instalment as I type this.  In the meantime, we thought we’d offer a practical solution to our newer customers who are attempting to transform HL7 messages for the first time.

With that said, I’ll pass this post over to Mo to introduce his brand new tutorial video: Transforming HL7 messages.

What does an HL7 message look like?

 ·  by artharrison  · 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 artharrison  · 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 artharrison  · 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 Demo – The Movie

 ·  by artharrison  · 9 Comments

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!