Translating HL7v2 to FHIR

Last updated: Feb 27, 2024
PRODUCT OWNER
HEALTH TECH VENDOR
HCO

While healthcare isn’t generally known for its technical innovation or prowess, the advancements we have made wouldn't be possible without HL7v2. It was born in the 1980s (like many of our Redoxers).

It came out of a “meeting of the minds,” but maybe most prominently from the mind of Donald Simborg, who was CIO of University of California, San Francisco Health System (UCSF Health) at the time. In 1981, he connected four microcomputers to a network to exchange transitions between the UCSF registration system, clinical laboratory, outpatient pharmacy, and radiology systems.

Living in Silicon Valley, Donald thought he could make a business out of it and founded STATLan. He struggled to get traction and had the idea to boost his business by developing a non-proprietary healthcare standard. He gathered several influencers, and with that, HL7 was born. HL7v2.1 was first implemented in production in 1990 and there's been little stopping it since.

HL7 estimates that 95% of U.S. healthcare organizations use HL7v2. Whether you're a health tech vendor or healthcare organization today, it's likely that you're touching HL7v2, or that you should be.

Who needs to translate HL7v2 to FHIR®

Redox can benefit customers on any side of the HL7v2 data exchange, including:

  • healthcare organizations establishing a new patient's history;
  • healthcare organizations looking to power CRM, analytics, or operational dashboards; or
  • health tech vendors consuming patient data for service within their app.

How it works

For healthcare organizations: You send patient, order, or scheduling data to Redox Nexus via HL7v2 feeds. We translate the data into a FHIR® notification, which we push to your connection.

For health tech vendors: You establish what kind of patient, order, or scheduling data you want to receive from your connection. They set up HL7v2 feeds with Redox Nexus. We translate the data into a FHIR® notification, which we push to your system.

Either way, you can send and receive HL7v2 data as FHIR® notifications with Redox API actions like these:

Translated HL7v2 event types

HL7v2 event type
FHIR® notification
Order Entry (ORM)
Order
service-request-created
service-request-cancelled
service-request-updated
Admit, Discharge, Transfer (ADT)
PatientAdmin
patient-arrived
patient-created
patient-discharged
patient-merged
patient-pre-admitted
patient-registered
patient-transferred
patient-transferred
patient-updated
Observation Result (ORU)
Results
results-created
Medical Document Management (MDM)
Document
document-created
document-deleted
document-replaced
Pharmacy/Treatment Encoded Order (RDE)
Order
medication-request-cancelled
medication-request-created
medication-request-updated
Scheduling Information Unsolicited (SIU)
Scheduling
scheduling-appointment-booked
scheduling-appointment-cancelled
scheduling-appointment-updated