HL7 Collaborations

The inbound and outbound HL7 Collaborations provide message validation, sequence numbering, ACK and NAK generation, and recourse actions. The predefined HL7 Collaborations are designed to implement the HL7 standard protocol and inter-operate with similar standard compliant systems by simply changing the Adapter property configuration.

If a system does not conform to the HL7 specification, the Collaborations can be modified for that transaction by changing the Java code using the Collaboration Editor. The Collaborations Java code is designed to be available and “transparent” so you can easily reference the predefined Java code to see how it currently handles HL7 transactions and make the appropriate modifications.

The Collaboration Editor allows you to create and edit Java code to modify a Collaboration for your specific needs. In many cases this code can be created graphically (drag and drop), using the Collaboration Editor’s Business Rules Designer. If you need to change the code of a prebuilt Collaboration, you should duplicate the Collaboration first and then modify it.

The Collaborations are designed to target one unit of work at a time, meaning the resolution of one message at a time. Once the current message transaction is resolved, the Collaboration is free to process the next HL7 message. The general form of the Collaborations is a state machine. Based on the state of the connection, the Collaboration performs the appropriate action. Additional Collaborations can be added to a Project to increase message flow.