Tools for Ensemble Interfaces

HL7 Message Search across all Ensemble Namespaces

Over the years, we have found HL7 interface engine message search tools to be of limited use for totally understanding all data going through an interface engine.  Part of the problem is the lack of easy indexing and reindexing of message content.  Our HL7 message search utility allows for easy index creation, index deletion, and reindexing of HL7 messages going through an Ensemble interface engine.  

Indexing is a requirement for all interface engines today, since on a week day there may be a million or more messages passing through the engine.  But what if you want to search for data from yesterday with no index?  No problem with Simple HL7 Search - simply create a new index and reindex the last day or two of messages before beginning the search.  In addition, all these features are included in the search utility:

 * Optional extract to files in perfect HL7 format of all messages meeting the search criteria

 * Optional display of fields and/or segments or display from 1 to 999 segments of the HL7 messages 

 * Highlighting of Search Patterns within the displayed message or segment or field

 * Check box for display of ACK messages underneath the HL7 message if Ensemble I/O logging is turned on

 * Email audit for resent messages with user ID and a hyperlink to the message in the Ensemble Browser

 * Segment by segment message editor for displayed messages with resend of original or edited message

 * Automatic discovery and display of messages for user selected Ensemble namespaces, not just the current namespace 

 * Automatic hyperlinks for displayed messages to the message trace in the Ensemble Message Browser

 * Easy indexing by HL7 field name and flexi-indexing to create indexes of HL7 field contents

 * Combination indexing - combine several HL7 fields into the same index name 

 * Message indexing for selected patterns only, for specific date ranges, and with exclusion capability

 * Indexing throttle control -  the indexing throttle is an adjustable pause of 1 - 10 seconds per 1000 indexed messages

 * Automatic deletion of old message indexes - set how many days to keep indexes and forget it

 * When changing indexes, delete all indexes in seconds, and reindex as many days as you wish

 * Optional automatic deletion of old completed or aborted/discarded Ensemble HL7 message bodies and associated message headers  

Link to FREE software:  Google Drive (January 2020) 

Simple HL7 Search now searches for HL7 2.x messages across all user selected Ensemble Namespaces or a selected namespace from a drop down list and automatically displays a message's ACKs (if IO logging is enabled for inbound and/or outbound interfaces) as shown in the 1st example screen print.  When IO logging is on for both inbound and outbound the multiple ACK's are clearly identified for the inbound interface and for the outbound interface.  

Also, the programs automatically detect all user selected namespaces that have HL7 messages.  In the 2nd screen print example, a search for this patient name brings up messages from namespaces ENSNS2 and ENSEMBLE in reverse chronological order.  

Sending an edited message from SimpleHL7Search:

Search Settings:

Flexi-Indexing:  Locations automatically appear at the bottom of the Index list in alphabetical order (after the primary indexes).  See the next screen print for how to set this up.  When using the flexi-indexes, don't worry about the contents in the Pattern field - it will automatically be filled in with the Index name.  You can use the include and exclude fields as normal.  These fictitious examples show nuclear medicine locations.

Drop down list of previous searches (up to 25) - as soon as you click on a previous search, that search starts immediately.  

Displaying and Resending all messages that meet the search criteria:

Use the reserved word "INDEX-FIELD" (context sensitive) as the Index Name to cause the contents of the field to become an index.  In this screen print example every location in PV1-3.1 becomes an index, so you can easily look up all results coming from a particular hospital location.  If you want, you can just use PV1-3 and get the complete location with room and bed as well, but this creates more index entries.  The list automatically cuts off at 10,000.  Feel free to try it out, because you can always click on the "Clear Index-Field List" button to remove all of the flexi-index list.  Then the list starts building again as new messages are indexed.  

Don't forget to use the "Must Contain" field to limit the indexing of the locations to the interfaces you are interested in - if you are only interested in bedside monitors, then only index those interfaces for fewer indexed messages and faster searches.

Another example would be the use of flexi-indexing on PID-5.1 in a test environment, where the number of last names would be small (less than 10,000).  Then you could just select names from the drop down list for message searches instead of typing in a last name.

New Screen Print showing choice of UK or US date format and setting for days to keep Ensemble HL7 2.x messages: