{"id":11088,"date":"2017-05-16T13:16:55","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T17:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/?p=11088"},"modified":"2026-04-07T10:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:36:09","slug":"unmasking-the-hl7-data-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-transformation2\/unmasking-the-hl7-data-standard\/","title":{"rendered":"Unmasking the HL7 Data Standard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this series of articles, we will describe the semi-structured HL7 file format used in many healthcare industry data storage and processing settings, and show how you can rapidly transform and mask large volumes of HL7 XML messages without writing code. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This first article introduces the HL7 standard and explains how HL7 messages are structured with an example. \u00a0The next article will cover parsing and structuring this data with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/sonra.io\/flexter-for-xml\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Flexter Data Liberator<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and seamlessly processing (transform, de-identify, \u00a0cleanse, report on, etc.) the results in the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/products\/voracity\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">IRI Voracity<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> platform. Note that for PHI data masking purposes, it is also possible to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-protection\/masking-phi-in-hl7-edi-files-with-darkshield\/\">discover and de-identify PHI in HL7<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-protection\/masking-phi-in-x12-edi-files-with-darkshield\/\">X12<\/a> messages in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/products\/darkshield\">IRI DarkShield<\/a>, without pre-parsing or other processing.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>The HL7 Industry Data Standard<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Health Level 7 (HL7) is the primary data standard for the healthcare industry worldwide. HL7 allows clinical systems to speak the same language when exchanging data as messages. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">HL7 started in 1987 when an international group of experts created a first version of the standard. Volunteers founded the not-for-profit \u201cHealth Level Seven International\u201d consortium and declared HL7 2.1 to be the first usable version of the standard in 1990. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The standard was widely adopted after the ANSI-compliant v2.3 was released. All minor releases of HL7 2.x are backward compatible, which made it hard to evolve the standard. As a result, HL7 v3 was released and exists alongside v2.x. However, adoption of v3 has been slow, and the vast majority of implementations are still based on version 2.x. HL7 is also ISO-compliant.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>HL7 XML Encoding<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">HL7 messages can either be encoded in EDI or XML. At first, only EDI was used as a serialization mechanism. However, XML has various advantages over EDI. It is more widely adopted than EDI, and there are a lot of tools, such as Flexter Data Liberator, to efficiently process XML messages.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">XML messages come with properly defined schema files called XSDs, which are widely used to implement industry data standards. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hl7.org\/documentcenter\/private\/standards_temp_6E8BA743-1C23-BA17-0C4D6BEF0575ED3D\/V2XML\/HL7_V2_XML_R2_2012JUN.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is an excellent guide from the HL7 website on how to encode HL7 messages in XML. It also shows examples of how the messages differ from EDI.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>\f<\/b><b>HL7 XML Message Structure<\/b><\/h3>\n<h4><b>HL7 Message Types<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before we process HL7 XML files with Flexter Data Liberator, let\u2019s have a look at how HL7 messages are structured. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First, there are different message types, each representing a business process of the overall standard. The most popular message types are for patient administration and orders. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each message type is represented by a code. For patient administration, this code is ADT, which stands for Admission, Discharge, and Transfer. Another popular message type is order entries. One of the message codes for orders is ORU. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to learn more about the message types and their implementation, see the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hl7.org\/implement\/standards\/product_brief.cfm?product_id=185\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">HL7 messaging standard specifications<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from the HL7 website. The v2.3.1 HL7 specification is over 1,000 pages and can be downloaded <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hl7.org\/DocumentCenter\/private\/standards\/v231\/v231_PDF.zip\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (registration required).<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><b>HL7 Trigger Events<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each message type is split further into so-called trigger events. A trigger event correlates to an event in the real world; e.g., admission of a patient to a hospital or observation messages.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>HL7 XML Sample Files<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can also download <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hl7.org\/documentcenter\/public\/standards\/V2\/Sun_HL7v2xsd.zip\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">HL7 XML examples for ADT and ORU<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from the HL7 website.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The sample HL7 XML message below is of message type Observation Reporting (ORU), and corresponds to trigger event R01. What does this mean? ORU is an observation message used to transmit lab results. The R01 trigger event instructs the receiving system to create a new observation report.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11097 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XML-samples.png\" alt=\"XML samples\" width=\"624\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XML-samples.png 624w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XML-samples-300x19.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/p>\n<h4><b>Segments<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each HL7 XML file is further split into segments. In our sample XML file, we have the segments for Patient (PID), Patient Observation Request (OBR), and Patient Observation (OBX).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11089 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Segments.png\" alt=\"Segments\" width=\"535\" height=\"659\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Segments.png 535w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Segments-244x300.png 244w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 535px) 100vw, 535px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h4><b>Sequences<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each segment is further split into one or more mandatory or optional sequence numbers. Here is an example for PID:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11096 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Sequences.png\" alt=\"Sequences\" width=\"600\" height=\"60\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Sequences.png 600w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Sequences-300x30.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the above PID element, we are dealing with PID sequence number 3. We can look up what sequence 3 stands for in the specification.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11090 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Figure-3-2.png\" alt=\"Figure 3-2\" width=\"714\" height=\"157\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Figure-3-2.png 714w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Figure-3-2-300x66.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 714px) 100vw, 714px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We now know from the lookup table that sequence 3 is the Patient Identifier List. Apart from the name of the element, the above table also tells us if a sequence is optional, backward compatible, or required (column OPT), plus other pieces of information, like the length of the field.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><b>Data Types<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What about XPN.1 (&lt;CX.1&gt;555-44-4444&lt;\/CX.1&gt;) then, which is the next element in the hierarchy?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11092 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XPN-1.png\" alt=\"XPN\" width=\"594\" height=\"108\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XPN-1.png 594w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XPN-1-300x55.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a so-called data type. In HL7, there are simple and complex data types. An example of a simple data type is TS, which is a timestamp. An example of a complex data type is XPN, which stands for Extended Person Name. Codes for data types can be looked up in the specification.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11093 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XPN-extended-person-name.png\" alt=\"XPN - extended person name\" width=\"655\" height=\"87\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XPN-extended-person-name.png 655w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/XPN-extended-person-name-300x40.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 655px) 100vw, 655px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">HL7V 2.3.1 page 2-60<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><em><b>Note<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Instead of writing out the full name for each code, element names are abbreviated to keep the size of the XML files small for faster network transport and processing.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<h3><b>Parsing HL7 XML Files<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now that we have some background knowledge on the HL7 standard and understand how HL7 XML messages are structured, we can process them into a relational format. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-transformation2\/process-and-protect-hl7-data-with-voracity\/\">The next article<\/a> shows how the enterprise version of Flexter Data Liberator parses and structures the XML examples from the HL7 website mentioned in my introductory article on HL7, and how IRI Voracity seamlessly processes and protects the results in relational database tables.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this series of articles, we will describe the semi-structured HL7 file format used in many healthcare industry data storage and processing settings, and show how you can rapidly transform and mask large volumes of HL7 XML messages without writing code. This first article introduces the HL7 standard and explains how HL7 messages are structured<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"btn-filled btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-transformation2\/unmasking-the-hl7-data-standard\/\" title=\"Unmasking the HL7 Data Standard\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":11607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,8,31,1,776],"tags":[1265,1260,1264,1412,1258,1259,1266,1263,1262,789,1411,1410,550,1261],"class_list":["post-11088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-intelligence","category-data-protection","category-data-migration","category-data-transformation2","category-etl","tag-flexter-data-liberator","tag-hl7","tag-hl7-adt","tag-hl7-data-masking","tag-hl7-get-started","tag-hl7-intro","tag-hl7-message-masking","tag-hl7-oru","tag-hl7-xml","tag-iri-voracity","tag-phi-de-identificadtion","tag-x12-phi","tag-xml","tag-xsd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.4 (Yoast SEO v23.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Unmasking the HL7 Data Standard - IRI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-transformation2\/unmasking-the-hl7-data-standard\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unmasking the HL7 Data Standard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In this series of articles, we will describe the semi-structured HL7 file format used in many healthcare industry data storage and processing settings, and show how you can rapidly transform and mask large volumes of HL7 XML messages without writing code. 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