Discuss your project
Healthcare

Clinical systems integration with HL7 v2 and FHIR

Admissions and referrals, lab orders and results, documents for the record: healthcare information has to move. We build and support the interfaces that move it, so staff enter information once and trust what they see.

Discuss your project How the work is delivered

A good fit if

  • An application needs demographics, admissions, orders or results from hospital, EMR or lab systems.
  • Staff re-key data or rely on printouts and faxes, or an interface fails silently.
  • You are replacing a system, or need interface capacity for a project or backlog.
  • Your digital health product must connect to hospital, clinic or lab systems.

Another approach may suit you better if

  • A supported vendor interface can simply be switched on. Usually better; we help check.
  • You need configuration inside your hospital system or EMR, or a one-time data migration.

What is included

  • Data flow map: systems, message types, volumes, owners, failure points
  • Approved specifications: triggers, structure, field mapping, code sets, error handling
  • HL7 v2 through your engine, FHIR, vendor APIs, secure files
  • Identifier, code and terminology mapping, with documented rules
  • Error queues, alerts and replay; health monitoring with support runbooks
  • Test evidence (volume, errors, downtime); TRA and PIA inputs

What this service is

Each system holds part of the picture:

Hospitals

Information system plus lab, imaging, pharmacy, scheduling, patient flow, finance, supply chain.

Clinics and family health teams

An EMR with scheduling, billing, referrals and patient messaging.

Labs, imaging, care providers

Their own systems, each with its own data.

Digital health products

Need to connect to all of them.

Unconnected, staff re-key data, decisions rest on stale information and errors creep in. With your interface team and vendors, we build through your engine or published interfaces, treating each as a clinical data flow: specified, tested, monitored, documented.

StandardUsed for
HL7 v2ADT (admissions, discharges, transfers), ORM and ORU (orders, results), SIU (scheduling), MDM (documents)
FHIR APIsReading or updating specific information, where enabled
Vendor APIs, flat files, SFTPClinic EMR and lab interfaces, and systems that offer nothing else

Built to fail safely

Problems live outside the happy path: a code missing from a mapping table, a system down for upgrade, a message out of order. Rejected messages surface at once in an error queue, not days later via a clinician. Mapping for identifiers, locations, providers and codes is owner-approved, and test data keeps real patient information out of development.

Common integration projects
  • Admissions, discharges and transfers to patient flow, bed management and housekeeping tools.
  • Orders to lab or imaging, results back to the chart, clinic EMR and ordering application.
  • Documents and forms from custom applications filed into the patient record.
  • Scheduling linked to reminders, portals and online booking.
  • Referrals and reports between clinics, specialists and hospitals instead of fax.
  • Supply, staffing and cost data to finance or ERP systems.

Privacy, security and procurement

Your organization remains the health information custodian. We work within the restrictions PHIPA places on service providers, carry only the data each flow needs, encrypt it in transit and provide inputs to your threat and risk assessment and privacy impact assessment. If a service we operate exists mainly to let two or more custodians share personal health information, the PHIPA regulation treats the operator as a health information network provider, with further requirements such as access logs, a written threat and risk assessment and a written agreement with each custodian. We plan for those from the start.

General information, not legal advice. Federal interoperability legislation, Bill S-5 (the Connected Care for Canadians Act), was before Parliament and not law as of October 2026.

Hospitals and public agencies can engage us through an RFP, RFQ, request for supplier qualification or invitational process; others usually start with a written proposal. We complete your vendor security questionnaire. New-application interfaces usually come with healthcare software development and application support. Ownership of interface code and configuration is set in the agreement.

Delivery

How the work is delivered

  1. Assess

    Map systems, interfaces, message types and data, and who owns and approves each part.

    Output: Inventory and data flow map.

  2. Specify

    Triggers, content, mapping, code sets, errors and monitoring, agreed with your teams and vendors.

    Output: Approved interface specifications.

  3. Build and test

    End-to-end tests in your environments, including errors, volume and downtime recovery.

    Output: Tested interfaces and evidence.

  4. Go live

    Cut over under your change process, with parallel checks, rollback plan and close early watch.

    Output: Live interfaces, go-live report.

  5. Monitor and support

    Monitor, fix errors and adapt to upgrades, under a support or managed services agreement.

    Output: Monitoring, runbooks, support agreement.

Scope at a glance

Not included unless agreed

  • Interface engine and vendor licences or fees, billed by suppliers
  • Work only your system vendor or analysts can do
  • Clinical decisions on data use; clinical and privacy leads approve

What we need from you

  • Test environments for every system; non-patient test data where possible
  • Interface team or vendor contacts, specifications and any needed agreements
  • Clinical, records and privacy leads' decisions; your change advisory process

Before handover

  • Every message type passes end-to-end tests, including rejected and malformed ones
  • Error queue with alerts and replay; downtime of either system tested
  • Approved mapping, alerts to the right people, specifications and runbooks handed over

What affects the cost

  • Systems, interfaces and message types
  • Interface type and vendor specification quality
  • Mapping, identifier and terminology complexity
  • Test access, vendor contacts, support hours, change frequency

No package prices: estimates in Canadian dollars from an agreed scope, taxes shown separately.

Questions buyers usually ask

Do you work with Epic, Oracle Health, MEDITECH or clinic EMRs?

Yes, and lab systems, through the interfaces the organization and vendor make available: usually HL7 v2 via your engine, or FHIR and vendor APIs where enabled. You arrange vendor API access. Oracle Health was formerly Cerner. Naming a product implies no partnership.

Should we use HL7 v2 or FHIR?

Whichever your systems support for the job. HL7 v2 remains the workhorse for admissions, orders and results in hospitals and labs; FHIR suits applications that query or update specific information. Many projects use both; see our HL7 and FHIR guide.

Is there a Canadian FHIR standard we must follow?

Canada Health Infoway publishes CA Core+ (pan-Canadian core FHIR profiles) and HL7 Canada the Canadian Baseline. Both are still evolving, and provincial and vendor specifications often apply, so we confirm each interface's profiles when specifying.

What happens when a connected system is down?

Interfaces should queue messages and resend them in order, without duplicates, when it returns. We test for this and document what staff and support teams do meanwhile.

Insight

HL7 v2 and FHIR in hospitals

HL7 v2, interface engines, FHIR and flat files for Canadian hospitals, with testing, monitoring and privacy.

Need your clinical systems to share information reliably?

Tell us which systems are involved, what must move and where it breaks today. We will arrange a conversation with an integration specialist.

Discuss an integration project