BizTalk 2004 Prepped for Healthcare

An accelerator for BizTalk Server 2004 supports exchange of healthcare documents based on the HL7 electronic data interchange (EDI) standard. The accelerator will make the latest version of Microsoft’s BizTalk application integration platform more attractive in the healthcare field, particularly in the United States where about 90% of hospitals of over 400 beds use HL7 to some degree. However, the accelerator also sends a message to partners in similar large vertical markets: Microsoft’s BizTalk team will implement core messaging support for successful EDI standards, so partners should focus their own investments on integrating BizTalk with specific business processes and vertical applications.

Integrating Clinical, Administrative Operations

The HL7 standard defines a set of message types for exchanging data among healthcare applications and automating various types of medical transactions. It covers both clinical transactions (such as ordering tests and reporting the results of tests) and administrative ones (such as admitting a patient to a hospital). To date, it has been used primarily for integrating applications inside a single healthcare organization, and it is particularly popular in the United States.