We’re a clinical medical laboratory based in Ohio that provides services to a large number of nursing homes and physician offices. Most of our clients place lab orders and retrieve results via a web site (running Apache, Tomcat, JBoss, PHP, and using a PostgreSQL backend), and we use Mirth to handle HL7 LLP transactions between the web site and our new Laboratory Information System. The Mirth interface between the LIS and the web site has been in operation for about six months, and has performed beyond expectations.
Using a combination of Mirth to handle order information and barcode technology to look up orders sent via HL7, we have decreased sample processing time significantly, resulting in faster turn-around time of lab results and happier clients. Using Mirth to process lab results has allowed me much more creativity in what I can offer our clients - several feature requests that have been around for years have finally been implemented.
I am currently working with some of our clients to deliver lab results via HL7/LLP/IPsec to their EMR systems. Mirth will play a key role in this, using filters to ensure that results only go the proper recipient, and transformers to convert the HL7 results feed into whatever the client requires on their side.
Several of our clients have requested custom reporting features that are outside the normal laboratory report format. After Mirth stores the HL7 result messages into the database, we use a combination of Tomcat/JBOSS and the same HAPI toolkit that Mirth utilizes to parse the HL7, picking out various pieces of the messages to build up whatever report is required as XML, which is then processed and delivered to the client by the front-end web servers.
A lot of functionality for the cost of a new Linux server to run Mirth (made sense for our infrastructure) and a few barcode scanners…