Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Individual point solutions usually collapse under their own weight.
They are fragile and require so much time and effort to enhance
and maintain that they ultimately do not accomplish the fundamental
task. To use an analogy from the physical world, a better solution
would be a series of pipes to connect the various sources to our
analytical database. However, as previously mentioned, HL7 standards
have a large amount of leeway in their implementation. Continuing
the analogy, these pipes will not necessarily fi t together without
adaptors.
Mirth Connect [5] is an open source solution that provides the
plumbing and adaptors to connect clinical systems to an analytical store.
It provides the pipes in the form of what Mirth refers to as channels. The
channels are attached to various inputs and outputs via connectors
(Figure 20.4). Filters can be added to the channels to allow for fi ltering
out any data that are not relevant. Transformers allow for the selection
and transformation of data.
20.3.1 Connector creation
Mirth supports a wide variety of input connectors, from more general
protocols such as TCP or HTTP to more domain-specifi c ones such
as HL7 Lower Level Protocol (LLP) and DICOM. Mirth also supports
attaching channels to one another via connectors. The input connections
support a wide variety of customization and error handling specifi c
to the protocol that is being used, from timeout and buffer sizes for
network protocols to automatic fi le deletion or movement for the fi le
reader. This is detailed work that is often missed when writing custom
scripts. The other important aspect to setting up a connector is setting
the data types. This awareness of medical data types is what separates
Mirth from a more general message processing system. Mirth can
process HL7 v2.x, HL7 v3.0, X12, EDI, XML, NCPDP, DICOM,
and general delimited text. There is a separate set of data types for the
inbound and outbound source connector as well as the destination
connectors.
Depending on the purpose of the analytical data store, an implementer
may only be interested in a subset of the data coming from the source
systems. Mirth allows for the creation of fi lters to fi lter out any data
that are not relevant. Filters can be created both on the source connector
and the destination connector. Filtering at the destination connector is
useful if there are multiple destinations with a subset of the data going
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