Reducing HL7 Processing Errors through Automated File Creation and Ingestion Pipelines: A Production Case Study in EHR Data Integration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63282/3050-9246.IJETCSIT-V4I4P125Keywords:
Hl7 Version Two, Electronic Health Record, EHR Integration, Healthcare Interoperability, Message Processing, Pipeline Automation, Error Reduction, IBM Merge, Radiology, Integration, File IngestionAbstract
Healthcare data exchange continues to depend heavily on Health Level Seven version two messages despite the growing presence of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources APIs. In an electronic health record integration setting, the operational reality is that admission, discharge, transfer, observation result, and order messages flow continuously between hospital information systems, laboratory information systems, radiology systems, and downstream billing and reporting destinations. Manual handling of these messages, even when partially scripted, introduces both processing delays and error rates that are difficult to keep below five percent without dedicated infrastructure. This paper describes a production deployment in which automated file creation and ingestion pipelines were introduced to an electronic health record data integration workflow. The deployment reduced overall processing time by approximately thirty-five percent and reduced processing errors by approximately twenty percent. The paper covers the structure of the prior process, the design of the automation, the error categories that were targeted and the categories that remained, and the operational discipline required to keep the pipeline trustworthy. The intent is to provide a deployment-tested reference design that other healthcare integration teams can adapt to their own settings. The paper closes with a discussion of how the pipeline interacts with downstream consumers including radiology workflow systems, and how the operational metrics produced by the pipeline support compliance with the documentation requirements typical of regulated healthcare environments.
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References
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