When beginning to look at HL7 documentation you’ll see that to the untrained developer it’s just a pipe delimited file. But to someone who has to deal with HL7 on a daily basis it means much more than that. When beginning to learn about the technology behind HL7 you’ll come to understand that each system you need to integrate with  has different requirements and the data integration to those interfaces are handed differently.  Each field in HL7 is important to the consistency of data for the patient, if fields are not passed to the interface correctly the potential to create “phantom records” increases dramatically. With my experience “phantom records” is the most crucial part for working with HL7, and defining the UIDs (unique identifiers) for each patient/client is the most important part when defining your HL7 messages between health care systems. When “phantom records” are created it creates two/or more records for a particular patient in the interfacing system. This can create a tremendous amount of data drilling/mining/checking on the clinicians to make sure the data that came over the HL7 post was valid.  In the chance that data did not come across correctly could increase the chance that may potentially hinder patient care, due to the inconsistent data that was posted.

When HL7 is sent to different systems, in most cases, it’s sent using IP and port, which through network traffic on the network of the health care provider  is relatively secure.  When trying to get a grip on how to write/modify/read HL7 most interfaces will provide documentation, this is the central point or “bible” for you during the process of integrating two interfaces. Without diligent documentation from the interface provider integrating into the interface would be a painful nightmare. Each field in the HL7 segment is important, and each field has the potential to save a lot of time on the clinician’s behalf. Also with HL7 the messages can also be sent real-time with no need to have a process that runs nightly or during a scheduled task on a predefined interval. This can greatly speed up the efficiency and care of the patient/client.

In my experiences with HL7, it’s been a tremendous challenge, but I really do enjoy providing integration between multiple systems, and seeing the happiness  on the clinicians faces of surprise and excitement when they realize they do not have to spend time to input the patients/client data into their health care system(s).

Website design, development and rollout is one of the BSO’s primary functions as all programming at the BSO is based on internet application development methodologies. The BSO specializes in the process of capturing the client design and producing that concept into a working form that the client can maintain or be maintained by BSO staff.

Founded in 2007, Yellowbird Technology, LLC (Yellowbird) provides Information Technology, Application Development and Internet Marketing solutions to central Kentucky and Southern Ohio businesses.

Business Solutions Organization, LLC (BSO) provides Business and Financial solutions to small and medium businesses (SMB) and currently has clients in Lexington, Somerset and Berea. BSO offers solutions in Human Resources, Payroll, Accounting, Financial Reporting and Medical Practice Management.

“While working on a joint project with Yellowbird, we discovered that our companies shared a common goal of providing a high level of service and business intelligence to our customers.” stated Joe N. Claytor, BSO President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO). “It didn’t take long to figure out that by teaming together, we could provide extended and balanced services to our current and future customer base.”

“BSO was a perfect fit for us.” says Jim C. Jarrells, General Manager of Yellowbird. “Quite often, while in the performance of a technology project, we encountered customers who desired more from us than just technology solutions.” “By partnering with BSO, we are able to provide a complete analysis of the customer’s business needs and then deliver a solution that encompasses both business and technology working together in an integrated and workable design.”

The merger of Yellowbird and BSO has allowed the group to further expand its services to include Health Information Technology (HIT). “Our comprehension of the medical services and management model allows us to provide practical expertise that includes the local desktop through sophisticated diagnostic and electronic medical records systems,” says Michael D. Muncy, Vice President of Application Development.

For more information, visit the BSO website at http://www.mybsoteam.com. You can also follow them on FaceBook (https://www.facebook.com/MyBSOTeam), Twitter (http://twitter.com/mybsoteam) and LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/companies/645417).

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