SimpleHl7

SimpleHL7 is a library that manages HL7 v2.x documents for interfacing with health care systems. The goal of SimpleHL7 is to make it easy to create basic HL7 messages while also having the power to create more complex ones. SimpleHL7 is agnostic of message and segment types, it works only with the basic structure of HL7 documents.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'simple_hl7'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install simple_hl7

Usage

SimpleHL7 can be used for either message creation or parsing.

Message Creation

A simple example:

msg = SimpleHL7::Message.new
msg.msh[9][1] = "ADT"
msg.msh[9][2] = "A04"
msg.msh[10] = "12345678"
msg.msh[11] = "D"
msg.msh[12] = "2.5"

msg.pid[3] = "454545"
msg.pid[5][1] = "Doe"
msg.pid[5][2] = "John"

msg.pv1[2] = "O"

msg.to_hl7

Would generate the following HL7 string.

MSH|^~\&|||||||ADT^A04|12345678|D|2.5
PID|||454545||Doe^John
PV1||O

This is the easiest way to use SimpleHL7, however most of the methods used above are syntactic sugar for underlying methods that are explained in detail later.

Adding a segment

The easiest way to add a segment to a new message is by calling its three letter segment name as a method on the message. For example to create a PID segment, do the following:

msg = SimpleHL7::Message.new
msg.pid

Note that since the MSH segment is always required it is created automatically. So if to_hl7 was called on the message above, the result would be

MSH|^~\&|
PID

Repeating segments

Using the segment name is the easiest way to create a new segment, but if you have more than one segment with the same name it won't work. The first name method call will create a segment, but subsequent calls will just reference that first created segment.

To create multiple segments of the same type use the underlying add_segment method.

obx1 = msg.add_segment('obx')
obx2 = msg.add_segment('obx')

To later retreive a certain segment use the segment method.

obx2 = msg.segment('obx', 2)

Adding components, subcomponents, fields etc.

To add values to the message just specifiy the index in brackets

msg = SimpleHL7::Message.new
msg.msh[12] = '2.5'

To specifiy a certain component use more brackets.

msg = SimpleHL7::Message.new
msg.msh[9][1] = "ADT"
msg.msh[9][2] = "A04"

It is important to note that under the hood the the bracket syntax actually adds the value to the first subcomponent of the first component of the first repetition in the specified field.

This means that:

msg.msh[9] = "ADT"
msg.msh[9][1] = "ADT"
msg.msh[9][1][1] = "ADT"

are all equivalent.

Repeating fields

Since repeating fields are less common in HL7 they require a little bit of extra work to create using SimpleHL7. Use the r(index) method to create repeats.

msg.pid[13] = '123-4567'
msg.pid[13].r(2)[1] = '876-5432'

Creates the following PID segment

PID|||||||||||||123-4567~876-5432

HL7 Escaping

HL7 special characters are automatically escaped properly when generating HL7, without doing any extra work.

msg = SimpleHL7::Message.new
msg.nte[3] = "Testing & escaping notes"
msg.to_hl7

Outputs:

MSH|^~\&|
NTE|||Testing \T\ escaping notes

Segment Separator

Some nonstandard HL7 implementations require a different segment separator character than "\r". To make this change pass the segment_separator option to the Message constructor.

msg = SimpleHL7::Message.new(segment_separator: "\r\n")
msg.pid[3] = "123456"
msg.to_hl7
=> "MSH|^~\\&|\r\nPID|||123456"

Transmitting via TCP/IP

The Lower Layer Protocol (LLP) is the most common mechanism for sending unencrypted HL7 via TCP/IP over a local area network. In order to be complaint with this protocol you can use to_llp method which wraps the HL7 message with the appropriate header and trailer.

msg = SimpleHL7::Message.new
msg.msh[12] = '2.5'

socket = TCPSocket.open(ipaddr, port)
socket.write msg.to_llp
socket.close

Parsing

To parse HL7 string use the parse method

hl7_str = "MSH|^~\\&|||||||ADT^A04|12345678|D|2.5\rPID|||454545||Doe^John"
msg = SimpleHL7::Message.parse(hl7_str)

Once the message is parsed use to_s to pull out values

msg.pid[5][1].to_s
=> "Doe"

If the string to be parsed contains a nonstandard segment separator then it can be passed into the parse method as well:

hl7_str = "MSH|^~\\&|||||||ADT^A04|12345678|D|2.5\r\nPID|||454545||Doe^John"
msg = SimpleHL7::Message.parse(hl7_str, segment_separator: "\r\n")

Parsing LLP messages

In case you are parsing HL7 messages received over TCP/IP using the LLP protocol, use the parse_llp method

llp_str = "\x0bMSH|^~\\&|||||||ADT^A04|12345678|D|2.5\rPID|||454545||Doe^John\x1c\r"
msg = SimpleHL7::Message.parse_llp(llp_str)

Once the message is parsed you can follow the same methods pointed above to pull out values

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request