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I am doing Research on the HL7 Version 3 messaging standard. I was told that hl7 version 2 implementations don't really support multimedia data processing (images, videos, etc.). However this blog: http://www.hl7standards.com/blog/2006/10/18/how-do-i-send-a-binary-file-inside-of-an-hl7-message/ states, that the ed (encapsulated data) data type already exists in the version 2 standard. i even found the speciation for the ed data type in chapter 2 of the hl7 v2.3.1 standard. So it is possible to send image data in hl7 v2 messages.

Also, the processing is the same: there can be a reference to the multimedia data (i.e. url) and there can be base64 encoded data.

I am aware of the fact that both sending system and receiving system have to support the ed data type. So there is the possibility that hl7 v2 implementations don’t support this data type. But other than that, is there really a difference?

Thank you!

PS:Of course I’m not talking about the main difference: the model driven methodology of hl7 v3. my scope is only the processing of multimedia data.

Alex
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thad
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3 Answers3

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I used to work for a large Hospital group in the middleware department where we transfered ORU messages with embedded AND linked (url) PDF's inside of HL7 V2.3.1 or V2.2, can't remember. As for the binary messages, we used the OBX-5 field to store the messages.

So yes, HL7 V2.x should support this.

However, you have to be careful since each country has its "own" implementation of HL7 - even each hospital "misuses" the one or another field for their own purpose.

Alex
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  • Thanks. not the direction i was going for. it is still an intersting answer. – thad Feb 28 '12 at 15:34
  • HL7 members are looking to use StackOverflow for more of its support queries. To aide that could someone create a hl7-v2 tag and use it for this question. – BENBUN Coder May 17 '13 at 15:32
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In HL7 v2.5 OBX-5 length is variable, e.g. you can use a ED datatype to put binary data of size 65536 (64KB), so it can hold small images. But for multimedia messages I recommend to use the DICOM protocol.

Pablo Pazos
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In version 2.2 the OBX-5 field is defined as "Observation Results", string data up to a maximum length of 65 bytes. It also says it can be repeated up to two times. That doesn't sound like you could fit much binary data in there.

Wdrev
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  • that's probobly the reason why hl7 v2.x isn't really used for multimedia data transportation. almost always obx-fields rather contain a reference. – thad Feb 28 '12 at 15:35