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Currently I am working with the HL7 and mirth part for the new appointment booking. So when I parse the HL7 data in mirth for SIU S12 request, I am getting the date in YYYYMMDDHHmmss fomat in SCH category.

Can any one have an idea about in which timezone it is coming in request? Is that come in the locale timezone from which the request is actually sent?

Thanks in advance for the help!!!

Jignesh Datta
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1 Answers1

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A few possibilities:

  1. The time zone is local to the sender of the message. This is likely but you should check with the sender! With the advent of cloud and remotely hosted systems the appointment could be in GMT+6 but the server is in GMT-5 and it won't be immediately clear if the time zone is defaulted to the appointment location or the server location
  2. The time zone doesn't matter. If I make an appointment with my doctor at 8 AM on Tuesday then that appointment is still at 8 AM on Tuesday. The software can store that time and date WITHOUT the timezone and still represent the data correctly. This is NOT the case if you're driving alerts or notifications off of the appointment.
  3. Infer the time zone from other clues in the message. Does the MSH segment have timestamps with the zone?
Freiheit
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  • Hi Freiheit, Thank you for the reply. Actually we are storing the appointment date in our health care system and sent the alerts( email, sms) one day before the appointment. So is that fine if we consider the appointment date time as the locale date time? – Jignesh Datta Jul 21 '16 at 14:11
  • Is your healthcare system physically located where a patient might live in one time zone but have an appointment in another? Since you are sending reminders 1 day in advance, does it matter if the patient gets that reminder 23, 24, or 25 hours ahead of the appointment? Finally, are you storing the appointment time WITHOUT the time zone? That last point is important because if your system converts it or assumes it is the local timezone it might shift the time – Freiheit Jul 21 '16 at 14:18
  • Our patient is located at same timezone where our healthcare system is located. And we are accepting the appointments 24 hours prior only. Our notification start at 8:00 AM daily to sent next day notification. So we are accepting appointment only before 8:00 AM for the next day or beyond days. And yes currently we are storing the time without timezone on our database. – Jignesh Datta Jul 22 '16 at 06:32
  • In that case yes, you just consume the time as a time. Local or other time zone doesn't matter because you're storing it without the time zone. So if your SIU date is 201607220907 then make sure your DB stores 201607220907 and you're done. – Freiheit Jul 22 '16 at 13:07
  • OK. Thank you Freiheit for the help!! – Jignesh Datta Jul 29 '16 at 07:28