HL7 Message Viewer

SmartHL7 Message Viewer is designed to be simple and effective for viewing HL7 messages.

Introduction

HL7 Message Viewer

The Message Viewer is a tool for casual inspection of HL7 messages. HL7 reference are gathered from the Internet and open source projects, so whilst I believe these are correct, they are not verified.

It’s up to you, the user, to verify the accuracy and/or usefulness of the program, and to decide whether or not to use it to your benefit. I love to hear your feedback and to make the program better but, to protect myself, you are using it for free and at your own risk.

Features

  • It has a small single executable, no install required.
  • It handles very large file easily.
  • It has build-in simple HL7 references – the latest version now up to HL7 v2.5.1.
  • The latest version (v1.4.1) supports user defined segments (i.e. Z-segments) and custom data types.
  • Supports customizable encoding (“multi-languages”, see below)
  • It has a straight-forward layout, colored element highlighting.
  • It can easily navigate through messages.
  • It has versatile import methods, including file drag-n-drop and paste from memory (Clipboard).
  • It is free.

Message Encoding

In computer terms, an “encoding” specifies how to interpret data from “a sequence of binary bytes” to the characters of a language that it represents. Without knowing the encoding, a program may incorrectly display characters in an unintended language.

By default, the Message Viewer uses the “Western European” character set encoding, which includes English. But you can now specify the encoding you would like it to use, in the Viewer’s config file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <!-- define Z-segments examples -->

    <!-- define custom data-type example. NOTE - Standard defined 
    
    <!--define encoding if it's for a different language -->
    <add key="encoding" value="windows-1251" />

  </appSettings>
</configuration>

The above can be set to a value according to your preferred language. Eg –

  • Unicode – “utf-8” (try this first)
  • Arabic – “1256”
  • Cyrillic (eg. Russian) – “1256”
  • Chinese (Simplified – “936”, Traditional – “950”)
  • Baltic (eg. Lithuanian) – “1257”
  • Hebrew – “1255”
  • Japanese – “932”
  • Korean – “949”
  • Thai – “874”

See Also

The HL7 Filter.

The HL7 Receiver.