Testing HL7 Messages

Question

I am in the process of implementing an HL7 Module in our EMR, but I am confused as how to test the messages. I was looking at LabCorp and Surescripts and was unable to find a te

Answer 1

Messaging Workbench allows testing HL7v2 messages against your own data types and segments which might be any, event completely out of "standard". This tool is free, however it is not supported so you get what you get with all glitches and features. Imho, it's still worth to try.

Answer 2

HL7 Inspector is a free tool which you can use as an LLP sender/receiver - great for testing purposes. It also has a number of features related to inspecting/validating individual messages.

Answer 3

Caristix Test can help you with hl7 testing. It also helps with test automation (http://caristix.com/products/test/test-plans-at-your-fingertips/) Not free but quite powerful.

Answer 4

I am not sure of the details of your module, however we use Mirth reading sample messages from an FTP server and pushing them through an LLP connector (or XML) to our software as required. This allows us to have a variety of data "sets" and various malformed messages to test against in a reproducible way. In fact we can process 100,000's of messages an hour It also simulates a "real" environment so that we can do load testing.