Has anyone implemented a health care system to integrate with other existing health care systems using Health Level 7 (HL7) protocol.
I am developing a app for healthcare that would ideally retrieve data from and post data to an existing system. Is this even possible with Bubble?
I don’t believe Bubble can serve as a secure, compliant platform for health information, at least with US laws. Might vary for other countries, but many people have explored the route of Bubble and HIPAA compliance, and to my knowledge, no one has succeeded.
@andrewgassen Thanks for this information. I am building this in Australia for Australian healthcare in the first instance but that does not mean to say it could not be expanded to other countries. This brings 3 questions
- Is there any Bubblers out there in Australia who are working with healthcare data?
- Very briefly - what are the compliance issues with HIPAA that Bubble can not meet?
- @emmanuel is HIPAA compliance on the future roadmap for Bubble?
Thanks
We want to do this at some point as we know there is a need and a demand for it, but I can’t commit to a timeline quite yet.
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Hi @emmanuel,
Is there any way to add my custom coding to parse the HL7 file and convert that into PDF file with in the bubble?
Or is there any way to access the external file folders and enabling the watch scheduler to check if the file name match with some ID (ex: Patient ID) then the file URL need to be updated in table cell (ex: Result URL)
Thank you for your time…
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Please can we now consider this? COVID has unearthed a lot of interest in different ways of working within the healthcare sector and interoperability through HL7 messaging will make Bubble a very attractive platform for development. Happy to discuss over DM.
Hi! Just to find out if was possible:
Did anyone integrate with other existing health care systems using Health Level 7 (HL7) protocol?
Thanks!
@motorhome @kenlaji
Having done more reading around this, it seems people are realising that the cryptic HL7 protocol is not responsive enough for modern apps and there is a movement entitled FIHR - that essentially attempts to replace HL7 with modern REST APIs. So, I wouldn’t hold out for Bubble coming up with HL7 integration facility.
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Well … bringing modern REST APIs would do wonders for the industry. Most health software connectivity is so archaic is almost laughable
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Thanks for the reply, @kenlaji
I found what you mentioned: https://www.hl7.org/fhir
It seems it is already in use, even by NHS in UK. Anyway, still will need to figure out how to make my app communicate with these other softwares thru this FHIR standard, probably will requiere to build a customized plugin, if possible.
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FIHR aims to replace HL7 with REST APIs. However, this obviously depends on people creating those APIs . For now, consider using an interface engine like Iguana from Interfaceware (http://www.interfaceware.com) - then you can connect Bubble apps to old tech.
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Actually, have a look at these guys: https://www.hl7soup.com - they are much more modern and the integration engine is more Bubble -like. Both involves running the engine on a server somewhere - cloud is perhaps better, choose an instance close to you.
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Ironic that the iguana link / website is not using https
I would like to know if there has been any progress in the use of the HL7 protocol in Bubble. I need to develop an AI application and get data from medical records. Can someone help me?
Unfortunately HL7 is transported on “bare” TCP/IP, while Bubble requires all communication to be HTTP/S. So unless the provider has implemented an API over HTTP/S you are out of luck for interoperability. I’ve worked in very large healthcare organizations that have implemented most of the major players in the market and none of them offer anything near to modern web standards of API interoperability (Session Tokens? Developer Keys? Hahahaha good luck). They all work on the “vendor lock in” model of software sales.
The best that I could offer, with sponsorship, is to build a paid pass through service that parses between JSON and HL7 based on node-hl7-complete. That still doesn’t solve the communication problem which is fundamentally bottlenecked by EHR/EMR vendors.
The other important bit of history to understand HL7 is that it was originally developed explicitly to support the medical insurance industry, not patient care. HL7 is deeply structured around passing claims and billing information onto medical insurers. Over the decades it has been co-opted for patient care but that really was not the underlying design intention. Unfortunately until a more appropriate alternative is standardized this is what we have. Given the structure of the American healthcare economy there are absolutely no incentives to develop a better standard. Maybe one of the Nordic countries will put together something useful?
Finally, when in doubt see XKCD:
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Any update on this?