FHIR to HL7 V2 integration

Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and the Scarborough Health Network (SHN) Toronto, Ontario complete their Epic HIS to the Ocean eReferral Network FHIR integration, which enables healthcare providers to securely send electronic referrals in real-time to WCH and SHN while keeping patients informed.

MDI Solutions provided their interface engine software, MD Link, and interface development and support services to facilitate the FHIR integration for WCH and the facilities at Scarborough Health. As the Ocean eReferral system required data exchange using the FHIR standard and the Epic system installed at both organizations was deployed using HL7 V2, MDI used MD Link to link the data formats.  The FHIR to V2 interface development included:

• Managing both discrete and non-discrete data included in referral requests
• Processing Provider add-on messages – in text strings or file attachments
• Creating patients or matching existing patient for new referrals into Epic
• Sending status and booking updates from Epic to Ocean

Due to the intricacy of the required interfaces, the project required Epic Bridges (Epic’s communication layer) expertise, so MDI assigned a Bridges-certified resources to the SHN project, who coordinated the interface workflow design and development to and from Epic, and assisted SHN staff with coordinating testing of the Epic clinical applications.

Women’s College Hospital, www.womenscollegehospital.ca, is a world leader in health for women, health equity and health system solutions – a hospital designed to keep people out of hospital. They are developing ground-breaking innovations that address issues related to population health, patient experience and system costs. They advocate for health equity, knowing that a healthy society requires a level playing field where everyone has access to timely, high quality, efficient and compassionate care.

Across their three hospitals and several community-based satellite sites, the Scarborough Health Network’s, www.shn.ca, programs and services are designed for the specific needs of the Scarborough community. They offer full-service emergency departments; diagnostic, surgery, rehabilitation, and geriatric care; as well as advanced birthing centres for moms, newborns, and growing families. They are leaders and partners in specialty mental health, cancer and kids’ care.