What does an HL7 message look like?

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?

New and Improved Members Website

This morning I finished up what I hope will just be “Phase 1″ in improving iNTERFACEWARE’s Members website. The interface for viewing existing licenses has been simplified, making it much easier to find the license(s) you’re looking for. Now browsing through your company’s licenses is quick, easy, and maybe even a little fun. And you can even export your company’s licenses as a CSV file, with which you can create an Excel spreadsheet for your own reference.

This is response to the fact that many customers now have hundreds of licenses which made the old interface a little cumbersome.  Love to hear your feedback on the new interface.

Happy browsing!

-Kevin

Iguana Under Stress

We know that by simply using our products our customers are putting a huge amount of confidence and trust in us. The health related data that flows through our applications is highly sensitive and affects the potential well being of many people. This is a fact that we do not look upon lightly and is the reason we put our software through many tests before every release.

Not only do we test every new feature for correct functionality and usability we also put Iguana through very rigorous stress tests. We send hundreds of thousands of messages through test Iguana servers to confirm that Iguana doesn’t buckle under pressure and, more importantly, that Iguana doesn’t lose or corrupt any messages.

HL7 Integration on 64 bit Windows

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

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.

Introducing Iguana 4.0

HL7 Integration Engine HL7 Interface

We’re very proud to officially announce the launch of Iguana 4.0. This is a major milestone for all of us at iNTERFACEWARE. With months of design, development, QA and stress-testing behind us, everyone is very excited to see just how quickly – and easily – our customers have been taking to the new release.

Want to jump right in? Go ahead and download your free copy of the most current version here: IGUANA 4.0: HL7 Integration Engine