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Health IT & Interoperability

HL7 Interoperability

A practitioner's path through health-data interoperability across the full HL7 family — from the wire-level v2 messages that still run most production interfaces, through v3/CDA documents, to modern FHIR APIs — plus the terminology and operations knowledge real integration work demands.

Made for Technical and clinical-adjacent professionals integrating healthcare systems. Assumes general computing literacy; introduces all domain concepts from first principles.

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Curriculum

Lessons build in sequence, but you can revisit any topic whenever you need it.

  1. 01

    Course 1

    HL7 v2 Fundamentals

    Start at the wire level. The v2 message format is still the backbone of hospital integration, so it grounds every concept that follows.

    11 lessons
    01 Foundations 3 lessons
    1. 01 What HL7 Is and Why It Exists
    2. 02 Anatomy of an HL7 v2 Message
    3. 03 How v2 Messages Are Exchanged — Acknowledgments and MLLP
    02 Message Structure in Depth 5 lessons
    1. 01 The MSH Header, Field by Field
    2. 02 Data Types — from ST and NM to XPN, XAD, CX, and CWE
    3. 03 Components, Subcomponents, and Repetition
    4. 04 Z-Segments and Local Customization
    5. 05 Escaping, Encoding, and Character Sets
    03 Conformance and Versions 3 lessons
    1. 01 The v2 Version Lineage (2.1 to 2.9) and Backward Compatibility
    2. 02 Optionality, Cardinality, and Loose Conformance
    3. 03 Message Profiles and Conformance Constraints
  2. 02

    Course 2

    HL7 v2 Messaging in Practice

    Apply the fundamentals to the message types that carry real clinical workflows: admissions, orders, results, scheduling, and billing.

    10 lessons
    01 Patient Administration 2 lessons
    1. 01 ADT and the Patient Lifecycle (A01 to A08 and Merges)
    2. 02 The PID, PV1, and NK1 Segments in Clinical Context
    02 Orders and Results 3 lessons
    1. 01 Order Workflow — ORM/OMG and the ORC and OBR Segments
    2. 02 Results — ORU and the OBX Observation Segment
    3. 03 Units, Reference Ranges, and Abnormal Flags in OBX
    03 Scheduling, Documents, and Finance 3 lessons
    1. 01 Scheduling with SIU
    2. 02 Medical Documents with MDM
    3. 03 Charges and Billing with DFT
    04 Query and Batch 2 lessons
    1. 01 Query and Response Paradigms (QBP/RSP)
    2. 02 Batch and File Protocols (BHS and FHS)
  3. 03

    Course 3

    Healthcare Terminologies and Coding

    Messages move data, but meaning lives in codes. A shared grounding in SNOMED CT, LOINC, ICD, and RxNorm before the standards that bind them.

    7 lessons
    01 Why Terminologies 1 lesson
    1. 01 Codes versus Free Text — Semantic Interoperability Revisited
    02 The Major Systems 4 lessons
    1. 01 SNOMED CT — Concepts, Relationships, and Expressions
    2. 02 LOINC — Naming Observations and Lab Tests
    3. 03 ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS — Diagnoses and Procedures
    4. 04 RxNorm and Medication Coding
    03 Using Terminologies in Messages 2 lessons
    1. 01 Value Sets, Bindings, and the CWE Data Type
    2. 02 Mapping and Maintenance Pitfalls
  4. 04

    Course 4

    HL7 v3 and the Clinical Document Architecture

    The model-driven reaction to v2. CDA documents remain widely exchanged and introduce the RIM thinking that informs FHIR.

    4 lessons
    01 The v3 Reaction 1 lesson
    1. 01 Why v3 and the Reference Information Model (RIM)
    02 Clinical Document Architecture 3 lessons
    1. 01 CDA Document Structure — Header and Body
    2. 02 Levels of CDA and the C-CDA Templates
    3. 03 Where CDA Is Used (and Where It Isn't)
  5. 05

    Course 5

    FHIR Fundamentals

    The modern, web-API standard. Resources, REST, and search are where most new interoperability work happens today.

    8 lessons
    01 The FHIR Model 4 lessons
    1. 01 Why FHIR — Resources as the Unit of Exchange
    2. 02 Anatomy of a Resource (JSON, ids, and metadata)
    3. 03 References, Contained Resources, and Bundles
    4. 04 Data Types and Extensions
    02 The RESTful API 3 lessons
    1. 01 CRUD Interactions and the FHIR HTTP API
    2. 02 Search — Parameters, Chaining, and Includes
    3. 03 Operations and the CapabilityStatement
    03 Terminology in FHIR 1 lesson
    1. 01 CodeSystem, ValueSet, and the $expand and $validate-code Operations
  6. 06

    Course 6

    FHIR Implementation

    Real FHIR work is conformance work: profiles, implementation guides, SMART on FHIR, and bulk data.

    5 lessons
    01 Conformance 2 lessons
    1. 01 Profiles, Extensions, and StructureDefinition
    2. 02 Implementation Guides and US Core
    02 Apps and Access 2 lessons
    1. 01 SMART on FHIR and OAuth2 Scopes
    2. 02 Bulk Data Export (Flat FHIR)
    03 Validation and Testing 1 lesson
    1. 01 Validating Resources Against Profiles
  7. 07

    Course 7

    Interoperability in Practice

    Tie it together with the operational layer: integration engines, troubleshooting, security, and go-live — applicable beyond HL7 alone.

    6 lessons
    01 The Integration Engine 2 lessons
    1. 01 What Interface Engines Do (Mirth, Rhapsody, Cloverleaf)
    2. 02 Transformation, Routing, and Filtering
    02 Reliability and Troubleshooting 2 lessons
    1. 01 Error Handling, Retries, and Dead-Letter Queues
    2. 02 Diagnosing Lost and Duplicate Messages
    03 Security, Privacy, and Go-Live 2 lessons
    1. 01 Consent, Minimum Necessary, and HIPAA Touchpoints
    2. 02 Interface Testing and Go-Live Readiness