Tag Archives: HL7

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 contact us 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

My Dad Mervyn Muir – A pioneer meta integration engineer

 ·  by Eliot  · 1 Comment

The question of meta programming and modeling in health-care is a hot issue with HL7 v3 and the Reference Information Model (RIM).  When ever it comes up I think about my Dad’s TV remote.

My dad Mervyn was the personification of think different long before Apple ever trademarked the term.

He worked his entire career for the New Zealand (NZ) DSIR as a geo-physicist. Topical given the recent events in Christchurch and Japan. Science does not pay well. So my father had a certain thrifty resourcefulness when it came to problem solving.

His resourcefulness was often uninhibited by aesthetic considerations. Growing up as a slightly insecure adolescent it was hard to appreciate at the time. I was mortified at the time he turned up in Auckland for my graduation using black plastic rubbish bags for his luggage.

My father had knack for finding solutions to problems that other people wouldn’t think of.

The Rise and Fall of HL7

 ·  by Eliot  · 19 Comments

The title of this post might seem unusual from what is supposed to be an HL7 middleware vendor. But times are changing and that is not where I see our future.

Standards do not exist in a vacuum. To be successful standards must address market needs and solve real problems so people can make or save money.  Writing code costs money. Less than 0.01% of code gets written for free. The majority of code is written by people that are being paid to solve problems with it.

There are plenty of standards which are not worth the paper they are printed on because are are not sufficiently useful or practical.

Complicated standards can be pushed for a while but ultimately markets reject them. Even governments will ultimately reject complicated standards, through a democratic correction process. Although they usually waste a fair amount of other people’s money along the way.

So back to HL7. Why was it successful?

Conversations From HIMSS11

 ·  by Eliot  · 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 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.

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 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  · 16 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).