The Healthcare Interoperability Challenge and Solution

Healthcare faces many interoperability challenges that Mirth® Connect can help resolve.

Patient data is most often exchanged through computer systems. For example, a doctor's office sends patient records to a hospital, or a clinic sends a prescription request to a pharmacy. Such communication is not foolproof. Data can be delayed or lost, and privacy is not always assured, making transactions less efficient and reliable than they could be. Contributing factors include the following:

• Protocol conflicts between sites
• Mismatched versions of record-keeping software
• Costly software licensing
• HIPAA privacy and security
• Incompatible data due to varied software and communication methods
• Lack of control and flexibility related to software use

In the following diagram, you can see Mirth® Connect's flexibility. A lab's data system sends a Health Level Seven (HL7) message to Mirth® Connect through a Minimal Lower Layer Protocol (MLLP). Mirth® Connect inserts patient data into an electronic health record (EHR) database, creates a PDF (portable document format) file, and sends an email message with the PDF file attached.

The next diagram shows how Mirth® Connect reads patient data from a hospital's electronic medical record (EMR) system. With elements mapped in its own channel, Mirth® Connect generates and sends an HL7 message to a client for outpatient care. Multiple configurations are available depending on how the channel is constructed.