In NZ various centres are trialling e-messaging between GPs and the hospital. This means creating a HL7 RSD 2.4 message to send a consultation or clinic note back to GPs. I have successfully created such a message and have been sending letters to GPs .. the letter itself is a PDF which is base64 encoded. The recipient needs to decode the PDF and insert it into the local database. Australia uses HL7 2.3.1 and can't accept PDF attachments so I will have to create a plain text version for Australian users.
sounds like email with some structure. Ideally there will be a standard in North America. Of course it makes sense to send messages back and forth.
I now have a report tab like the fax one that shows when messages were received, and when ACKs were returned. Seems to take 1-12 hours for the recipient to reply. No complaints yet that they can't decode the attachment.
I'm now looking at being able to receive attachments as well. I can see them, detach them and now I need to upload them as well.
Seems to be working fairly well.. .can send and receive referrals. But some sites have their systems setup incorrectly so are not ACKing correctly. So their vendors are now in repair mode so that their clients work as they should.
