Introduction

This document describes the plugin for loading SPRs from the HL7 messages. The goals of the plugin are as follows:

1. Receive HL7 messages sent to OpenSpecimen via a port (HL7 v2.1, message type ORU / R03)
2. Every night, process all the HL7 msgs received and extract SPR text from it
3. Lookup for a participant with the access number in OpenSpecimen database using APIs
4. If found, attach the SPR with the patient.
5. If not found, store the HL7 in an "unprocessed" queue
6. Every night, retry the failed HL7 messages to see if it can be attached to a patient (in case the accession number was updated on a later date)
7. Send a summary email of failed messages to the administrator

Technical details

1. HAPI SDK to process HL7 messages
2. OpenSpecimen REST APIs to read/write data

Handling SPR addendum

In case the SPR is edited, it gets overridden on top of the existing SPR. The assumption is that in case of addendum, the message sent contains the older content and the new content.

Handling error cases

An email is sent after every run in case any message failed loading. All error messages are reprocessed for X number of days (where X is configured by the super admin). 

Audit

Every message received and processed is maintained in an audit table in the OS database. This can be used for getting statistics for how many messages received, processed, error, success, etc.