|
MammoBase |
Interfacing
to MammoBase
|
Interfacing
is straightforward, as we are dealing with:
·
the RIS
or HIS sending a limited number of demographics fields to MammoBase
·
optionally,
MammoBase sending back the completed breast imaging report (plain text,
paragraph format).
You can certainly involve your RIS or HIS vendor in
interface development. Often,
however, the local I.S. people can design a custom report that outputs
demographic fields in a delimited ASCII
file.
MammoBase
would like to receive as many of the following fields as possible.
|
Patient ID Patient First Name Patient Middle Initial Patient Last Name Patient Street Line 1 Patient Street Line 2 Patient City Patient State Patient Zip Patient Area Code Patient Phone Patient Business Area Code Patient Business Phone Patient Birthdate |
Referring Physician ID Referring Physician First Name Referring Physician Middle Initial Referring Physician Last Name Referring Physician Facility Name Referring Physician Street Line 1 Referring Physician Street Line 2 Referring Physician City Referring Physician State Referring Physician Zip Referring Physician Area Code Referring Physician Phone Referring Physician Fax Area Code Referring Physician Fax |
Choices to Make
·
You may
elect to have either an HL7 interface, or
a simple interface.
o
An HL7
interface may be either
by IP sockets or
by HL7-formatted ASCII files dropped into a shared directory.
o
The
"simple interface" will always be by delimited ASCII files dropped
into a shared directory. The
delimiter may be either the pipe character (i.e.
| ) or
the TAB character or
some other agreed-upon character.
·
If you
elect to interface via delimited ASCII file (either HL7 or simple interface),
MammoBase will pick up the file from any location visible in the Windows Network
Neighborhood, and delete the file when finished with it.
o
You may
send either one patient per file, or many patients per file.
o
MammoBase
will check the shared directory either
once a second, or
at any other user-defined interval.
·
You may
send patient data either
at the moment the patient walks into the reception area, or
in advance of the appointment (for instance...the prior evening).
·
Your
interface may be either one-way or
two-way.
o
In a
one-way interface, the main system sends demographics to MammoBase.
In a two-way interface, the main system sends demographics to MammoBase
and MammoBase sends back the completed breast-imaging report.
o
An HL7
interface costs more than a simple interface. But regardless of the interface style, there is no additional
cost for a two-way interface over that of a one-way interface.
Concatenation
It
is best if we can avoid any concatenation of fields.
For instance, as long as FirstName and
LastName are separate fields, MammoBase will have no trouble dealing
with a patient named “Mary Jane Van Der Hoek.”
But if the patient billing system concatenates this into a single Name
field, MammoBase will have difficulty parsing the data.
The
same principle holds true where city and state are concatenated
together…particularly if the host system has fixed-length fields.
If an unexpectedly long city name causes truncation of the abbreviation
for the state, MammoBase will have trouble with the data.
All these problems evaporate if concatenation is avoided.