Day 1: Action Lists 

Change encoding characters in the outbound message

• Change non-standard HL7 encoding characters “:” and “;” to “|” and “^”.

Use regular expressions to modify messages

• Split the patient name (PID-5) into individual HL7 components.
• Modify the format of a telephone number to be all numeric. If it’s not a local number, add a 1 in front so it can call long distance.
• Requires using ItemReplace with regular expressions.

Change the outgoing message type

• Change the incoming ORU message to an outgoing MDM^T02 message.

Escape the literal ‘&’ in a message

• A report is cut off whenever there is an ‘&’ in the body of the report. Put the ‘&’ back into the reports along with the data that was cut off.
• Requires using MsgParse, MsgEncode, and ItemReplace with regular expressions.

Split a single OBX segment with multiple OBX-5 values into multiple OBX segments

The EHR indicates that it is not able to properly handle the single OBX segment that has the dictated report in a repeating OBX-5 field. They would like an OBX segment for each line in the radiology report.  

In each OBX, they would like the exact same information as the first OBX with 2 exceptions:

• Each new OBX with have an OBX-1 field with a counter of which OBX sequence it is.
• Each OBX-5 will only contain one line of the report so there are no repeating OBX-5’s.
• Requires using ForEach loops and ItemNew to create new segments.

Add a header at the top of each OBX report

• Use ForEach and ItemNew to create 3 new lines as separate OBX segments to include the hospital name and address at the top of each report. Then, append all the report below it.

Day 2: Alerting, Troubleshooting, & Performance

Part 1: Alerts

• Analyze log files to determine required alert thresholds.
• Define the conditions and thresholds for alerting in your environment via the use of a planning matrix template.
• Create a global alert configuration.
• Modify existing Alert configuration objects and identify/resolve any dependency issues caused by the changes.
• Create and modify a child alert configuration.
• Create an Action Point to alert on the contents of a message meeting a specific pattern.

Part 2: Monitoring

• Troubleshoot and resolve the following situations:
  • An inbound connection is not getting connected (red state)
  • An inbound connection that is not receiving messages
  • An outbound connection that is not getting connected & queue depth is building
  • Message errors – how to resolve and resend errored messages
• Use the following resources and features to troubleshoot issues:
  • Windows commands such as Ping, Telnet, Netstat
  • Log Files – Graph Activity Log, Raw Log, Integration Engine Log
  • Log Verbosity settings
  • MLP Wrapping
  • ACK Settings

Day 3: Databases & Batch Processing

Part 1: Databases

• Create & maintain database interface objects
  • Data Point
  • Namespaces
  • Database Associations
• Modify Action Lists to read/write to a database
  • Check a database for a record (DBSelect)
  • Add a record to a database (DBInsert)
  • Update an existing record (DBUpdate)

Part 2: Batch Processing

• Receive individual HL7 messages, and write to a batch file using the File Gear
• Pick up a batch file using the File Gear, and send individual messages via TCP/IP
• Pick up a batch file using an Action List (File Operator), and send individual messages via TCP/IP