As part of our ongoing development, we create all kind of utilities and test applications. Sometimes the story ends here. But occasionally we find some of the development by products worthwhile and decide to spend some more effort and remove the 'by'.
HL7Sender is a utility for sending HL7 messages through the network. It is rather simple, single form application with very few features. It can read, write, validate and send HL7 messages.
The upper part of the form shows the message in a rich text control where it can be edited. Be careful with these edits. Every HL7 segment starts in a new line. The best way to edit the message is simply to cut and paste segments from other messages (you can open multiple instances of the program) or fill text between two | signs (field separator).
At the lower part of the form there are a few text fields where the user can set the MLP network protocol elements, the TCP/IP protocol attributes (destination host name or IP address, port number and timeouts) and disable or enable ACK’s.
HL7Sender uses Igor Chernizer’s HL7ImEx HL7 parser and the two message structure text configuration files (segDefs and msgRules) are located in the installation folder and can be edited manually if necessary. The user can duplicate these files with different suffixes in order to use multiple ‘flavors’ of the HL7 version. The flavor’s suffix can be set in the ‘Message configuration version’ text box (don’t forget the dot ‘.’).
HL7Sender is currently free and can be downloaded from [Update 24 March 2023, this download is no longer available. Please visit HRZ ZiKiT Server at www.hl7kit.com].