Tim, I don't know anything about MIRTH but I will assume it does something like take a HL7 v2 message and turn it into some XML document based on a provided schema, I would call this a transformation, just not XSLT. Assuming that the XML Schema used in MIRTH is a Template Data Schema, then you are only one further transformation away from openEHR. Any integration engine can be used to implement this approach using whatever mapping tools it provides.
Again I don't know about how MIRTH works but the catch in this is the Template Data Schemas might be too specific to allow MIRTH to be used against the TDS in one step. What I mean by this is that a TDS is specific to a use case such as a Microbiology Report, not a generic Observation Result equivalent to the HL7 OUR message. When receiving a ORU message you need to determine that it has a Microbiology observation within and apply the transform to the Microbiology Report TDS, if it contains a Lipids result then you need to apply the transform to a TDS containing laboratory-lipids OBSERVATION archetype in it. You could certainly come up with a template containing a generic laboratory OBSERVATION archetype in it and map everything in an ORU to that but you lose some of the semantics of the specialised archetypes. Using our current integration engine of choice, we have a mechanism where we can apply logic to determine what kind of lab report has been received based on data within the message and apply the appropriate TDS transformation and anything else we don't yet support we transform to a generic laboratory report TDS. This gives the ability to take all results from a lab into openEHR but can progressively utilise specialised archetypes for common results as we develop those transformation mappings. The benefit of this Archetype-based Integration approach is that we can start building a library of HL7 V2 to TDS transformations that can be used as a starting point for integrating with a specific HL7 interface, customising to suit the local HL7 and terminology implementation. This library could be an open resource. This is something that I have not seen possible in system integration before. BTW, this approach is not limited to integration with openEHR, but it is the Archetype that makes it work. The Archetype is the implementation independent logical concept model that is used derive the implementation to semantic mapping in and out of the Archetype-based normalised intermediate format. Regards Heath > -----Original Message----- > From: openehr-technical-bounces at openehr.org [mailto:openehr-technical- > bounces at openehr.org] On Behalf Of Tim Cook > Sent: Sunday, 25 November 2007 7:35 AM > To: For openEHR technical discussions > Subject: Re: Compact XML format...? > > On Sat, 2007-11-24 at 08:47 +0000, Heath Frankel wrote: > > Think of it as standard mechanism for data transformation rather > > than a standard data exchange, where the semantics of the archetypes > > are maintained at each stage in the pipeline. > > Would it be fair to say then that when working with HL7 v2 messaging. > I would want to use this data transformation process against the XML > output of MIRTH ( http://www.mirthproject.org/ )so that I can use all > the management facilities of MIRTH and only have to have (essentially) > one transform?? > > Cheers, > Tim > > > > > -- > Timothy Cook, MSc > Health Informatics Research & Development Services > http://timothywayne.cook.googlepages.com/home > > LinkedIn Profile:http://www.linkedin.com/in/timothywaynecook > > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-technical mailing list > openEHR-technical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical
