The United States is adopting specifications ("Implementation Guides") for
interoperable laboratory reporting based on the HL7 v2.5.1 ORU^R01 message.
Without going into too many details, for some of these documents the
authors are "pre-adopting" features from HL7 2.7.1 into the 2.5.1-based
guides. One such feature is the "truncation character," a fifth character
in MSH-2 that may optionally follow the other four that we are all familiar
with. The truncation character is described in the HL7 2.7.1 standard
Chapter 2 section 2.5.5.2. Oddly enough, the definition of the MSH-2 field
itself in that same document, section 2.14.9.2, does not mention the
truncation character and defines only four characters in MSH-2. Perhaps
that was an oversight.
In any case, as far as I know the truncation character is not provided for
in HL7 2.5.1. When I use the HAPI parser to parse a message that includes
it, it throws an exception:
2013/04/08 16:11:43 [Mem] 76,056,264 [ProcessHL7File] Error parsing the
first message in the file: ca.uhn.hl7v2.HL7Exception: Invalid or incomplete
encoding characters - MSH-2 is ^~\&#
My system is a message receiver. The current implementation guide I have
to deal with requires the "#" to be in MSH-2, but we have been ignoring
that so far and allowing labs to omit it. The next version of the
implementation guide, for Meaningful Use Stage 2, is likely to at least
allow it if not require it, but that means I have to be able to handle
messages that contain it.
Is there a standard method in HAPI to allow the relaxation of the
validation rule for MSH-2 in v2.5.1 so that it can successfully process
messages containing this character?
A related question: when HAPI adds the classes for v2.7.1, will they
tolerate the 5-character MSH-2?
Charles Fisher
Division of Epidemiology
New York State Dept. of Health
518-474-2735
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