“Yess, Another new problem to solve!” exclaimed Yaksha, looking at the monitor and excitedly punching her right fist.
“What do you have to solve for?” I asked, seated on her right.
“Oh, Actually, I just read the subject line,” she replied with a smile and sheepishly grinned, saying, “I still need to go through the email content.”
“Haha!! I haven’t seen anyone so enthusiastic about solving a customer problem,” I stated, swiveling my chair to my right. “Read the email, then we can discuss,” I added as I went back to reading endless emails on my laptop.
Yaksha gave an informal salute and said, “Aye, Aye, Captain.”
It was around noon when Yaksha approached me with the problem statement provided by the client. “The client wants to digitize the interaction of Registering a Patient,” she explained as she jotted down some pointers in her notebook.
“That’s it? Is that the only problem statement?”
“No, No, that’s only half of it.”
“Then what’s the other part?”
“The Problem is: Digitize Registering a Patient for a Clinical Trial.”
“Aah, that’s something different,” I said as I observed Yaksha’s notebook, which resembled a doctor’s prescription diary. “Because a Patient registration is a straightforward HL7 trigger event,” I added calmly.
“A04 Trigger Event?”
“Hmm, Yes,” I nodded in response. “But has the client requested a HL7-based solution?” I additionally inquired.
“It’s not mentioned,” she said, shaking her head. “They have just asked to share possible options,” Yaksha explained while drawing the word HL7 artistically.
“Okay, answer this. Technically speaking, which two standards can be leveraged?”
“Hmm, I am not sure, but I am guessing HL7 could be one of them.”
“Alright, we have one guess as HL7, but we aren’t sure yet.”
Yaksha nodded in agreement, saying, “Right on, boss,” in her Gen Z style.
“Do you think FHIR can be used?”
“I dunno, what does your experience say?” she inquired, holding her hand as a mic.
“I haven’t worked in this area, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t logically find a solution.”
“Meaning?”
“FHIR is like the continuation of HL7, Yes?
“Yes, it is.”
“So, if HL7 possibly has the option to Digitize the required interaction, FHIR would mostly have the capability too!”
Yaksha’s eyes lit up as she said, “Interesting logic, boss!”
“Now, how many options do we have?”n
“Two.”
“Shall we try and decipher the HL7 solution?”
“Yes, can I share the first step?”
“Absolutely.”
“We go to the site of Caristix,” Yaksha mentioned as she navigated to the site saved in her favorites.
“Then?”
“We can select Version 2.5 and navigate to a new page.”
“Okay, now what do we do?”
“We click on the search bar on the right and type: Register a patient,” Yaksha said, quickly typing what she needed.
Immediately, we got a list of four trigger events and saw the names individually. Our eyes stopped at the last line of the pop-up, which read, ‘CRM_C01: Register a patient on a clinical trial.’
“Whoah, So we have to transmit the Patient data using this Message and trigger event,” stated Yaksha as she raised her eyebrows.
“Seems so. What data does CRM_C01 capture?” I inquired as Yaksha clicked the trigger event, which provided details of specific segments. We focused on the required ones, viz, Header, Patient Identification, and most importantly, Clinical Study Registration.
“There are some optional segments as well,” mentioned Yaksha as she hovered her mouse over the SFT, PV1, and CSP segments.
“Yes, we will focus on the required ones for now,” I stated, adjusting my chair’s height.
“How can we find a specific example for this trigger event?”
“Hmm, the first and possibly the best place to look for examples is in the HL7 manual,” I suggested, requesting the keyboard from Yaksha.
“Interesting, no other place to find examples?”
“We can google it; some other websites share sample data, but you need not find a specific example for registering a patient on a clinical trial,” I explained, intently trying to find the EU link of HL7.
I finally found the link and navigated to the Seventh Chapter on Observation Reporting. “This is it; here is where we can find some sample data,” I mentioned as we read the list of chapters on the page.
“What do we do now?” inquired Yaksha, polishing her notebook, which was artistically filled with some of the words we discussed.
“Simple,” I said, pressing CTRL+F, typing the word CRM_C01 in the pop-up, and navigating to the place where the example was seen. “Here is the example,” I stated, moving my mouse in the section of the page.
“I can see the patient’s name is Everywoman,” mentioned Yakha as I highlighted the name. “But how do we know what each field means?” she asked curiously.
“We can use an online HL7 parser, like hl7messagepaser,” I said, opening a new webpage showcasing different data elements as a combination of the field name and its value.
“Wow, that looks so cool and easier to interpret,” said Yaksha, looking at the parser output. “So, we should map these fields with the data shared by our client?”
“Ideally, Yes. Using these details, we should be able to put our first solution together,” I explained, raising my left eyebrow like The Rock!
“Kewl, what about FHIR?”
I glanced at my watch, which showed the clock had struck one, and said, “We have made good progress till now, but we can delve into FHIR post lunch, shall we?”
“As you say, Boss!” mentioned Yaksha as she locked her computer, filled with enthusiasm to learn about FHIR after lunch.
“By the way, you can grab a copy of my book Healthcare IT Decoded or Amazon or check out my course on Udemy.”
My Course on Udemy
