HL7 Formatting characters Vs FHIR

1

Hi All,
I am a FHIR developer and I have a question related to converting HL7 formatting characters into FHIR. Following are some formatting characters supported by HL7.

• \H, \N\ Highlight
• .br\ Hard return
• .ce\ Centre
• .in\ Indent
• .sk\ Skip space
• .sp\ Next line, align horizontal
• .ti\ Temporary indent

Since we store these special formatting characters in Database, we have a translator to convert HL7 into FHIR and wondering whether there are any character set available for FHIR.

It seems some of the characters can be converted into HTML markup but I wonder by doing so will break the FHIR rules?

Best regards,
Chandima

2

It depends where. HTML is fine in narrative. For elsewhere, you may be restricted to markdown or may have to put the rendered version in an extension. See what the datatype says. (You can’t send HTML in a string element - unless your intention is for users to see unrendered HTML.)

1 Like
3

see also http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?page_id=441

1 Like
4

Hi,
Thanks a lot for your reply.
Technically my intention is to send unrendered HTML to the API calling application and then it is the calling application’s Rendering Engine’s responsibility to properly render this content. JSON or XML is not a rendering engine at all and trying to simplify HL7 formatting in FHIR to simplify things.