What is HL7 Integration? — Guide on HL7 Interface Integration

Health data interoperability adoption is the primary priority, ¾ of healthcare executives say. Moreover, according to the statistics, more than ½ of medical organizations plan to increase their investments in healthcare data interoperability development year-by-year.  

HL7 integration helps enable medical data standardization, assisting hospitals in achieving their primary goals. In this post, you will discover what HL7 (Health Level Seven) standards are, how they work, and how to integrate them.

WHAT IS HL7 INTEGRATION?

HL7 is a set of rules for composing messages and medical documents. The framework enables global medical data standardization so that software solutions using different technologies can seamlessly exchange health data.

The mission of Health Level Seven International company is to develop an internationally-recognized standard to access and share medical data upon demand securely.

HOW DOES HL7 INTEGRATION WORK?

HL7 interfaces are standardized messages that enable interconnected systems exchange medical data. They help connect a lot of digital solutions from independent healthcare software vendors that use various technologies. 

HL7-driven data standardization enables information to flow between diverse systems. Check the example of HL7 integration implemented by a hospital that uses different systems to deliver patient-centered services.

Many versions of HL7 standards have been released. The foremost types of standards are:

• HL7 V2
• HL7 V3
• HL7 CDA
• HL7 FHIR

Let's take a closer look at the types of standards below.

HL7 FHIR is the newest and the most emerging one due to its rich integration capabilities. Nevertheless, HL7 V2 remains the most popular among healthcare organizations, being a legacy HL7 standard.

HL7 INTEGRATION INSTRUCTION

In order to enable HL7 EMR integration in a healthcare organization, you need to analyze the existing environment, pick the most suitable option, and implement a new solution. 

Feel free to check out the six-step HL7 implementation guide below to enable clinical data integration in your organization. 

Step 1: Explore Existing Environment

For starters, you need to examine the existing systems in your healthcare organization. Create a list of disparate digital solutions used to manage patients, keep their medical records, prescribe medicines, etc. 

Also, you need to analyze workflows to map out the flow of medical data in a healthcare organization.

Step 2: Determine HL7 Compatibility of Software

Analyze every digital system established in an organization to discover what versions of HL7 standards they support. It is worth noting that different versions of HL7 standards may not be compatible.

The absence of backward compatibility is the main reason for the low level of HL7 V3 adoption. Most healthcare organizations decided not to upgrade their legacy HL7 V2-enabled system because of the need to design new interfaces from scratch.

Check out the compatibility of HL7 versions below.

Step 3: Choose an HL7 Integration Option

Various software solutions from different healthcare software vendors can be connected in two ways that are:

• Point-to-point
• HL7 integration engine

Discover the examples of the two different HL7 EMR integration approaches below.

Point-to-point

This approach needs specialists to develop different interfaces to connect every digital system separately. Clinical data is shared directly between interconnected systems. Using the point-to-point HL7 integration approach, only two systems can be connected using one HL7 interface.

HL7 integration engine

This approach needs to implement HL7 middleware that works as a hub for different systems in a healthcare organization. All digital solutions can be connected to an HL7 integration engine to facilitate healthcare data exchange because it helps to route HL7 messages. An HL7 interface engine can be installed in a cloud or using on-premises servers.

An integration engine may have a lot of useful features to streamline data exchange in medical organizations. For instance, it can validate shared messages and transform them.

The five most popular HL7 integration engines used by hospitals are the following:

• Iguana
• Definitive Healthcare
• NexHealth
• Redox
• Qvera Interface Engine (QIE)

The point-to-point integration approach enables developers to integrate several digital healthcare integration solutions into one system seamlessly. HL7 integration engines help interconnect a large number of systems from different healthcare software vendors.

Step 4: Gather a Team or Find a Vendor

To develop HL7 integration interfaces, you must involve a team of specialists. The two options to choose from are:

• Hire in-house HL7-certified specialists
• Hire a company that offers HL7 integration services

Let's elaborate on these options in more detail.

In-house specialists

Gather a team of tech-strong experts and share all the collected information about your existing systems. They will help you enable HL7 data integration between different systems. Your team can involve the following roles.

Where do I find HL7 integration experts? There are several options to find experts capable of connecting different systems using HL7 standards. As a healthcare organization executive, you can do the following:

• Reach a recruiting company. Hire a dedicated company with extensive experience in scouting and hiring in-house specialists.
• Post a job ad. Sign up for popular job listing portals like Glassdoor or Indeed and publish your job ad.
• Scout new employees. Explore LinkedIn profiles of potential employees with the required expertise and offer a new position.

What skills should they have? The required skill set of involved specialists depends on their role and job responsibilities. Nevertheless, hiring experts with strong knowledge of networks and healthcare digital systems is advisable. 

Also, ensure that involved experts have HL7 certification by exploring the Health Level Seven Certification Directory. It implies information about all HL7-certified members, including details on their certifications obtained.

External company

Hiring an external vendor that provides HL7 integration services is a hassle-free solution. A dedicated partner can allocate tech specialists with the required expertise and manage them to spend resources wisely.

Where do I find a vendor? To find a company that can help enable HL7 interface integration, you can explore trusted listings of firms with healthcare integration solutions development expertise, like Clutch, the most popular B2B listing.

How do I choose the best agency? Learn more about projects completed by a reviewed company that provides HL7 integration services and check reviews submitted by its clients. Also, feel free to reach out to the managers of a reviewed company to clarify if they have HL7 integration expertise.

Step 5: Initiate HL7 Integration

Involved specialists should establish smooth integration of disparate systems in your healthcare organization. 

In order to avoid any possible misunderstandings, prepare an HL7 integration plan first. It should imply detailed information about a considered HL7 integration engine, HL7 message versions, data routing rules, systems that should be connected, automated data sharing settings, etc.

Once the plan is reviewed and approved, tech specialists can break it down into small tasks and begin the implementation process.

Step 6: Test and Validate

Examine how a new HL7 messaging interface is configured to ensure data is shared between systems fail-free. An HL7 testing engineer can help check an HL7 interface integration and detect errors in case of a failure.

HL7 INTEGRATION OBJECTIVES

HL7 standards help enable clinical data interoperability in medical organizations, which is the primary objective of HL7 integration for 75% of healthcare executives. The other reasons to implement data interoperability are as follows.

• Requirement compliance. Medical organizations are obliged to share medical data digitally to meet modern compliance standards.
• Enhanced patient experience. Indeed, EHR (electronic health record) systems help improve patient care. However, seamless health data sharing enables doctors to deliver outstanding patient experiences.
• Improved data quality. The HL7 interface integration enables software engineers to develop systems that automatically review and validate data. Also, the HL7 healthcare standards help reduce the number of errors.
• Processes automation. Using HL7 standards, different systems can share clinical data automatically to improve performance. For example, a lab information management system can automatically send reports to an EMR system once completed.

CONCLUSION

HL7 EMR integration enables healthcare interoperability by connecting software integration solutions from disparate healthcare software vendors using HL7 healthcare standards.

The HL7 integration implies six crucial stages that are:

1. Existing environment analysis
2. HL7 compatibility review
3. HL7 integration option selection
4. Tech specialties hiring
5. Project initiation
6. Testing and validation

To enable hl7 interface integration in a healthcare organization, it's advisable to involve tech-strong specialists who:

• have hands-on experience in the healthcare industry
• hold verified HL7 certification
• have deep knowledge of networks and data management