Build HL7 healthcare integrations with Standard workflows in Azure Logic Apps (preview)

Applies to: Azure Logic Apps (Standard)

To build automated integrations for healthcare systems or migrate from BizTalk Server to Azure Logic Apps, use the HL7 built-in connector operations in Standard logic app workflows. This connector lets your healthcare organization continue to use their existing healthcare solutions and create new healthcare integrations in Azure Logic Apps.

This guide shows how to use the HL7 connector operations in Standard workflows. In this guide, the examples use the Azure portal, but you can create Standard workflows with these operations in Visual Studio Code.

Healthcare integrations with Azure Logic Apps

Healthcare organizations are complex businesses with different departments that work together. For example, hospitals have areas like admissions, doctors, nursing stations, laboratories, and billing. Each area produces and uses various kinds of data. For example, this information includes patients, medical procedures, medications, and billing charges, which multiple departments must often share. Healthcare systems face major challenges in providing efficient ways for departments to exchange this data with each other.

The Health Level 7 (HL7) protocol v2.x family defines widely adopted messaging standards across clinical systems such as EHR, LIS, RIS, and HIS. The protocol facilitates communication by providing data exchange standards across healthcare apps. These standards eliminate or reduce custom interface programming and program maintenance.

Despite modern standards such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), HL7 v2.x continues to dominate in real-time clinical workflows, such as admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT), lab results handling, and billing processing, for the following key reasons:

Common HL7 message types include:

• ADT: Admission, discharge, and transfer
• EPR: Electronic patient record
• ORM: General order message
• ORU: Unsolicited observation results
• DFT: Detailed financial transaction

Connector technical reference

The HL7 connector operations are available in all Standard workflows.

Operations

Supported and unsupported behaviors

Prerequisites

• An Azure account and subscription. Get a Azure account.

• Access to the healthcare system that you want to integrate.

• An integration account resource to define and store artifacts for use with enterprise integrations and B2B workflows.

  • Both your integration account and logic app resource must exist in the same Azure subscription and Azure region.

  • Before you start working with HL7 or MLLP operations, you must link your Standard logic app to your integration account.

• HL7 flat file schema and all the BizTalk schemas referenced by your HL7 schema.

  You must upload all these schemas to your integration account. However, unlike BizTalk Server, you don't need to upload the following common schemas:

  • Message headers: MSH_25_GLO_DEF.xsd
  • Acknowledgments: ACK_24_GLO_DEF.xsd and ACK_25_GLO_DEF.xsd

  The following example shows the ADT_A01_231_GLO_DEF.xsd schema and the following dependencies:

  • datatypes_21.xsd
  • segments_21.xsd
  • tablevalues_21.xsd

  

• A Standard logic app resource and workflow to use for your healthcare integration. See Create Standard logic app workflows in Azure Logic Apps.

  The HL7 connector doesn't have triggers, so you can use any trigger that works for your scenario.

  This guide uses the Request trigger named When an HTTP request is received. You can then add HL7 connector actions.

Limitations

In this release, the following limitations apply:

• The HL7 connector requires that you upload your schemas to an integration account.

• This implementation supports only single message processing.

Add an Encode HL7 action

Follow these steps to add the Encode HL7 action and set up the necessary parameters:

1. In the Azure portal, open your Standard logic app resource. Open your workflow in the designer.

2. If your workflow doesn't have a trigger, follow the general steps to add the trigger that best suits your scenario.

   This example continues with the Request trigger named When an HTTP request is received, for example:

   

3. Follow the general steps to add the HL7 built-in connector action named Encode HL7.

4. On the designer, select the added action, if not selected. In the action pane, provide the following information:

   Parameter	Required	Value	Description
   Message to encode	Yes	<message-to-encode>	The HL7 message content to encode.
   Header to encode	Yes	<header-to-encode>	The HL7 message header to encode.

   For example:

   

5. Save your workflow. On the designer toolbar, select Save.

Add a Decode HL7 action

Follow these steps to add the Decode HL7 action and set up the necessary parameters:

1. In the Azure portal, open your Standard logic app resource. Open your workflow in the designer.

2. If your workflow doesn't have a trigger, follow the general steps to add the trigger that best suits your scenario.

   This example continues with the Request trigger named When an HTTP request is received, for example:

   

3. Follow the general steps to add the HL7 built-in connector action named Decode HL7.

4. On the designer, select the added action, if not selected. In the action pane, provide the following information:

   Parameter	Required	Value	Description
   Message to decode	Yes	<message-to-decode>	The HL7 message content to decode.

   For example:

   

5. Save your workflow. On the designer toolbar, select Save.

BizTalk migration notes

Since the first BizTalk Server release, Microsoft provides support for healthcare scenarios. BizTalk Server helps organizations develop business processes across healthcare computer systems by using Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for HL7 (BTAHL7), the HL7 standard, and the Minimal Lower Layer Protocol (MLLP) for messaging.

BizTalk Server uses a disassembler pipeline to split HL7 messages into header, body, and custom segments. Azure Logic Apps exposes these messages as fixed outputs. This behavior simplifies HL7 message handling by avoiding multipart message complexity unless the number of parts varies.

The following table compares BizTalk Server with Standard logic app workflows in single-tenant Azure Logic Apps:

Related content

• Create Standard logic app workflows in Azure Logic Apps
• Create Standard logic app workflows for hybrid deployment on your own infrastructure