Convert xml into HL7 format - android

I am working on a telehealth device showcase.
I have found Mirth Connect but no able to get hold on it that much. Is there any other api or frees source or library which can be used on our android client to convert xml into HL7 or any other format to HL7.

It seems no one wants to speak up so I'll try. First of all, there are two distinct HL7 formats – HL7v2 and HL7v3. So your first question would be – I have some data stored in the database (in a flat file in the XML format; in a flat file in JSON; etc) and I’d like to map it to HL7v2/HL7v3/CDA/etc.
Since both HL7v2 and HL7v3 cover multiple domains (e.g., Patient Administration, Medical Records, Genomics, etc.) your next question would be to specify what you are trying to achieve. If it’s a single domain solution, i.e., Pharmacy Dispensing System notifications or a full-fledged multi-domain solution.
The next one, what open-source system to use if any – Mirth Connect or something else. It also depends on where the data mapping or transformation is done – on the client side or on the server side (i.e., you can send a request message in your own format and transform it to the HL7 on the server side before passing to other players).
I presume, and I might be incorrect, we are talking about the patient demographic data using HL7v2 running on a patient's mobile phone. The Mirth Connect, as your initial format to HL7v2 translator, may be Ok for prototyping, running as a black box somewhere, but for the real solution on the mobile phone it might be too excessive. If there are quite a few request messages I would build them as my own proprietary code. If your solution is more complex, then it requires reviewing the solution architecture to find out all transformation points and this goes a bit beyond than a discussion on this site.
Again, this is my very subjective opinion.
And the last, but not least, there is an "Unofficial Mirth Connect Developer's Guide" book which may help in initial understanding what the Mirth Connect is capable of.
(Disclaimer: I'm the author of this book, so any comments or suggestions are welcome.)

For creation of some simple HL7 v2 messages you don't need any special libraries or tools or as it is almost simple text piped format (actually it is a binary format but if you take care about correct segment delimiters and don't use other then ASCII characters then it is straightforward to create).
Once you have the HL7 packet you can send it to an IP address with HL7 listening endpoint using the HL7 Minimal Lower Layer Protocol (MLLP).
Some open source code base that might be useful even on Adroid device are Java libraries used by the dcm4chee project.
e.g. the DICOM Clinical Data Manager system - image archive is able to communicate with both DICOM and HL7 systems and internally uses code that translates HL7 v2 messages into XML intermediate representation and back. Look for XSLT (*.xsl) transformation scripts.

Related

Protobuf file reading only some field

I have more then 50 fields that is continiously writing in the .proto file but my query is that
1) if I need to read only 10 fields then how can this be achieve.
2) If I need to read partial data from the particular field then how can I achieve.
this should be done without loading all the data from the .proto file.
Thanks for your concern.
This is not really possible with Protobufs. In theory you could write a streaming parser that might be able to extract part of the message without parsing the whole thing, but it would only work if the fields you needed happened to be located towards the front of the message, since you'd at least have to parse through everything before the fields you want. In any case, none of the standard protobuf implementations provide an easy way to do streaming parses, because this isn't the way protobuf is designed to be used. Some third-party implementations, such as upb, might help.
On the other hand, Cap'n Proto, an alternative to Protocol Buffers, does support reading just one field out of a large file, without having to parse the fields before it. It does this by placing fields at fixed offsets and taking advantage of mmap() for large files.
Disclosure: I am the author of both Cap'n Proto and Protocol Buffers v2 (the version open sourced by Google).

How to represent IFC models on Android?

I have to represent IFC files on an Android application. First I have to get them from a server (I will use BIM Server), and then extract the geometry out of the IFC file, and try to display them. The parsing is my first concern at this point. Is there any JAVA library that mounts on the BIM server to directly give us the .obj data so we can show them on Android? Or maybe it is better to parse IFC files at the client side, and then display it?
Sorry, there is no robust documentation on it.
I found there are two tools for it: OpenIFCTools, and IFCOpenShell which provides a plugin. I'm not sure which one to use, and which one gives a better JAVA API to go for.
You can not directly visualize them on Android as it is not supported (based on what I know so far). You may need to parse them somehow on the client side, or use some tools to parse them on server, then send the corresponding .obj files (such as IFCOpenShell's IFCOBJ conversion tool)

Why won't my mysql database accept an accent mark?

I've just discovered an issue where city names that contain accent marks, e.g. La Cañada, Peñasco, etc., won't save to my database. Looking through the answers to another SO question, What is the best collation to use for MySQL with PHP?, I've tried changing both my database and the varchar's collation type from latin1_swedish_ci to utf8_general_ci which still refused the character. I also tried utf8_unicode_ci with a similar result.
I've verified that the save works if I strip out the accent mark on the client side, but ideally I'd like to keep it in there, since that is the real name of the city (according to google maps apis anyway).
What collation types do you use to support ñ?
Additional info: Using MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and CakePHP with an Android app as the client
Thanks for the suggestions so far. I guess this is turning into a CakePHP question now... I noticed that by default utf8 is not enabled, so I enabled it in my app/config/database.php file. I FTPed the file back to the server and tried it again still without any luck. Do I need to redeploy the application to kick off those db config changes, or is there another area of my application I should check? First time CakePHP user here.
Collation is merely the order in which characters are sorted, which is a necessary step in performing comparisons. It has nothing to do with how data is stored (except insofar as a given collation is specific to some encoding).
Character encoding is the mapping of characters to their binary representation for storage, which determines the supported character set.
However, just because a database/table/column are using a particular character encoding is not the end of the story. You must also consider the encoding used within your application and on its interfaces with other components (such as MySQL).
Whilst it's aimed at PHP, UTF-8 all the way through pretty much covers all of the things you need to consider.

best method for xml data storage

I am a php/mysql developer learning android. I am creating an android app that receives info from my php app to create list views of different products which will open a web view of that product's detail.
Currently my php cms web application outputs xml lists for an iphone app.... (also, separately outputs html). I have full control of the php app so if there is a better way to output the data for the android app please let me know.
I have created code that reads the xml from the web and creates the list view. The list can be refreshed daily, so the data does not need to be read from the online xml every time the app starts.
So I was thinking to store the data retrieved locally to improve my apps responsiveness. there may be up to 500 product descriptions to be stored at any given time in up to 30 different xml lists. I am starting development with one xml list with about 30 products.
For best performance should i store the product info in a sqlLite db or should i store the actual xml file in the cache/db or some other method like application cache.
I also was think to create the update of the data as a service, would this be a good idea?
The most efficient way to store data is RAM. But if you want to cache it, then the most efficient way is Database.
I recommend you store your data in sqlite android database.
You could also consider zipping you xml for faster network transfer and unzipping through java.util.zip package classes. You could even consider a simpler format for transmitting data, less verbose than xml, using a datainput/outputstream.
(I do that in of my apps and it works great)
Here are some details on data input / output stream method :
imagine a proprietary protocol for your data, only what you need. No tags, no attributes, just raw values in order.
on the client side, get an input stream on your data using URL.getContent() and cast it in input stream.
on the client side still, build a data input stream encapsulating your socket input stream and read data in order. Use readInt, readDouble, readUTF, and so on.
on the client side, from php, you need to find a way to save your data in a format that is compatible with the data format expected by the client. I can't tell much about PHP, I only program using java.
The advantage of this technique is that you save bandwith as there is only data and no verbose decoration due to xml. You should read about java specs to understand how double, int, strings are written in data output stream. But it can be hard using two languages to get the data right.
If php can't save format in a suitable way, use xml, it will be much simpler. First try with just plain xml, then give a try using a zip or tarball or xml file.
But all this is about speed gain during network connection.
The second part of what you have to do is to store each row of your list in a SQL table. Then you can retrieve it pretty fast using a CursorAdapter for your list view (it breaks the charming MVC model but it is quite fast !).
Sorry about this, but it became too long to write as a comment. This is not intended to be an answer to your question, because in my opinion Stéphane answered very well. The best solution is indeed to store the data in an sqlite database. Then you need to create the class to be used as a connection between the data, the database and the app. I don't want to take credit for what is said here already (I, too, voted it up).
I'm concerned with the other suggestion (use of low level raw streams for data manipulation, the list steps on that answer). I strongly recommend you to avoid creating your own proprietary protocol. It goes like this:
I need to exchange data.
I don't want to deal with the hassle of integrating external APIs into my code.
I know I can write two 5 minute routines to read and write the data back and forth.
Therefore, I just created my own proprietary format for exchanging data!
It makes me cry whenever I need to deal with unknown, obscure and arbitrary sequence of data blobs. It's always good to remember why we should not use unknown formats:
Reinventing the wheel is counter-productive. It seems not, but on the middle term it is. You can adapt your project to other mediums (server-side, other platforms) easily.
Using off-the-shelf components help you scale your code later.
Whenever you need to adapt your solution to other technologies and mediums, you'll work faster. Otherwise, you would probably end up with ad hoc code solutions that are not (easily) extensible and interoperable.
Using off the shelf components enables you to leverage advances in that particular technology. That's particularly important when you are using Android APIs, as they are frequently optimized for performance later down the road (See Android's Designing for Performance). Rolling your own standards may result in a performance penalty.
Unless you document your protocol, it's extremely easy to forget the protocol you created yourself. Just give it enough time and it will happen: you'll need to relearn/remember. If you document, then you are just wasting the computational time of your brain.
You think you don't need to scale your work, but chances are you will most of the time.
When you do, you will wish you had learned how to easily and seamlessly integrate well known formats.
The learning curve is needed anyway. In my experience, when you learn, you actually integrate well known formats faster than imagining your own way of doing things.
Finally, trust your data to geniuses that take their lives into creating cohesive and intelligent standards. They know it better!
Finally, if the purpose is to avoid the typical verbosity of XML, for whatever reasons, you have several options. Right now I can think of CSV, but I'm no expert in data storage, so if you're not confortable with it, I'm sure you can find good alternatives with plenty of ready to use APIs.
Good luck!

Protocol design

I have a client server program to communicate the pc with an android phone using usb, based on http://www.anothem.net/archives/2010/10/15/android-usb-connection-to-pc/
Now I need to design a protocol that facilitates information exchange from the pc to the phone. How should I go about this ? Should we use XML for this? I was looking at google protocol buffer.. Is that the right direction ?
Thanks
Caroline
I've been using protocol buffers on Android. I avoided it for a long time, reasoning that it was overkill. That was before I took half a day to try it out.
Here were my results, after spending an afternoon on it. At first it increased my APK size from 2.89megs to 3.1 megs. I consider that inconsequential. Then I found that I was able to delete code I had all over the place, where I had been doing parsing manually. I was able to delete code that required the data to come in in a specific sequence.
Then I was able to completely delete a few classes I had in my application, whose purpose was to serve as temporary, lightweight information-only "model" classes that represented data coming to or from the data stream. In short, it started making things way easier and smaller, and more reliable.
Protocol Buffers may well be not the best thing for your situation. But I do recommend that you take a few hours and try it out. That way you'll be making your decision to leave it behind from a position of strength and knowledge.
Be sure to use the lite version of protocol buffers. The .jar file is 160k, but the amount of functionality it brings is huge. I'll be using it all the time from here on out.
I do have some concerns about dynamic memory allocation / garbage collection when using it in a game context long term. But for now the serialization happens infrequently enough that it's a non-issue for me.
Another bonus: I have some Python code that generates data files that the application reads. That python code processes some XML and then generates binary files. I think I'll be able to completely eliminate that code by using protocol buffer's text mode, then using protoc directly to create binary files.
You need first to design the higher layer of your protocol. Xml and protocol buffers have to do with how the data are formatted. Depending on the data you need to exchange they may or not be suitable. From what you way in your comment, it seems that you want to develop something like a remote control for your PC. In that case both XML and Google Protocol Buffers will be an overdesign. Simply create a text protocol, allocate a byte or two for the command type and some bytes for the data body.
Have a look at the AT commands structure. The structure of an HDLC frame could also give you some ideas. This has some things like error checking, which you don't need, but other than that a simple text protocol will use similar fields.

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