hl7 0.0.2

Simple library for parsing messages of Health Level 7 (HL7) version 2.x.

HL7 is a communication protocol and message format for health care data. It is the de facto standard for transmitting data between clinical information systems and between clinical devices. The version 2.x series, which is often is a pipe delimited format is currently the most widely accepted version of HL7 (version 3.0 is an XML-based format).

python-hl7 currently only parses HL7 version 2.x messages into an easy to access data structure. The current implementation does not complete follow the HL7 specification, but is good enough to parse the most commonly seen HL7 messages. The library could potentially evolution into being fully complainant with the spec. The library could eventually also contain the ability to create HL7 v2.x messages

As an example, let’s create a HL7 message:

>>> message = 'MSH|^~\&|GHH LAB|ELAB-3|GHH OE|BLDG4|200202150930||ORU^R01|CNTRL-3456|P|2.4
'
>>> message += 'PID|||555-44-4444||EVERYWOMAN^EVE^E^^^^L|JONES|196203520|F|||153 FERNWOOD DR.^^STATESVILLE^OH^35292||(206)3345232|(206)752-121||||AC555444444||67-A4335^OH^20030520
'
>>> message += 'OBR|1|845439^GHH OE|1045813^GHH LAB|1554-5^GLUCOSE|||200202150730||||||||555-55-5555^PRIMARY^PATRICIA P^^^^MD^^LEVEL SEVEN HEALTHCARE, INC.|||||||||F||||||444-44-4444^HIPPOCRATES^HOWARD H^^^^MD
'
>>> message += 'OBX|1|SN|1554-5^GLUCOSE^POST 12H CFST:MCNC:PT:SER/PLAS:QN||^182|mg/dl|70_105|H|||F
'

We call the hl7.parse() command with string message:

>>> h = parse(message)

We get a n-dimensional list back:

>>> type(h)
<type 'list'>

There were 4 segments (MSH, PID, OBR, OBX):

>>> len(h)
4

We can extract individual elements of the message:

>>> h[3][3][1]
'GLUCOSE'
>>> h[3][5][1]
'182'

We can look up segments by the segment identifer:

>>> pid = segment('PID', h)
>>> pid[3][0]
'555-44-4444'

Project site: http://www.bitbucket.org/johnpaulett/python-hl7/

HL7 References:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HL7

• http://nule.org/wp/?page_id=99

• http://www.hl7.org/