HL7 message validation tools
Contents
Message Workbench
The Message Workbench tool can handle several tasks around HL7 message conformance. Presumably among these is the ability to validate a message against a particular conformance profile.
NIST Message Validator
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has deployed a message validation tool for validating the public health messages for meaningful use. The tool is here. It will validate two immunization messages and the HL7 2.5.1 ORU_R01 ELR message to Public Health. There are several configuration choices. One warning: any field that the Implementation Guide calls "RE" or "Required but may be empty," is treated by the tool as "R" or "Required," so that it actually is not allowed to be empty.
The NIST HL7 V2 Messaging Portal is here.
Another warning: there is another NIST validation tool that validates Clinical Documents (CDA). Don't get confused.
MQF Validation tool
The PHIN Message Quality Framework has a tool for message validation here. There are six use cases to which you can validate, of which two are ELR 2.5.1 IG Sender Profile and ELR 2.5.1 IG Receiver Profile. Mary Hamilton and the rest of the MQF team are eager for feedback on this tool.
MSS Validation tool and services
This tool is based on prior work by the PHIN Message Subscription Service team. They work with state-level public health jurisdictions to create and deploy software that leverages the Rhapsody message broker engine from Orion Health for public health message exchange. One of the best developed sets of software is for Electronic Laboratory Reporting.
The people on this project are in the process of creating web and web service front ends to an instance of their software. An early version of it is available here (sign in as "guest", no password).
IHE Gazelle HL7v2 Message Validation Tool
This tool is part of the gazelle suite of testing tools. It offers validation of the HL7v2 messages define in the context of the IHE profiles. The validation tool is based on the HAPI library and on more the 170 HL7 message profiles. The tool offers both validation through a web GUI or through call to web services. Access the tool here and the Documentation