HL7 INTEGRATION SERVICES
Most hospital systems still exchange the bulk of their clinical and administrative data over HL7. When those interfaces are inconsistent, undocumented, or built one-off per connection, data gets delayed, dropped, or re-entered by hand. Peerbits builds and maintains HL7 integrations that keep your systems exchanging data the way clinical workflows actually depend on.
INBOUND · ADT^A01 — Patient Admit
MSH|^~\&|EPIC|HOSP|INTEROP|20260805||ADT^A01|MSG001|P|2.5.1
HL7 INTERFACE ENGINE
Route · Transform · Validate · Acknowledge
Lab System
Pharmacy
Clinical App
MSA|AA|MSG001|Message accepted · 3.2ms
HL7 INTEGRATION FOR CONNECTED HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS
When a lab result, an admission, or a discharge doesn't reach the systems that need it automatically, someone ends up bridging the gap manually — re-keying results, calling to confirm a transfer, chasing down a pharmacy order that never arrived. Over time, that manual work becomes the integration, and it doesn't scale past a handful of connected systems.
HL7 exists precisely to prevent this: it's the messaging standard most EHRs, lab systems, and pharmacy platforms already speak. Peerbits builds and maintains the HL7 interfaces that move admissions, orders, results, and scheduling data between your systems automatically, with the mapping and error handling that keep those messages accurate in production.
WHAT IS HL7 INTEGRATION?
HL7 integration connects healthcare systems using HL7 messaging standards — most commonly HL7 Version 2 — so that a real-world event in one system (a patient is admitted, an order is placed, a result comes back) generates a structured message that's delivered automatically to every other system that needs to know about it.
Each message follows a defined structure of segments and fields, delimited by pipes and other separators, and is tied to a specific trigger event and message type. For REST/API-based interoperability, see FHIR Integration Services.
MSH|^~\&|EHR|HOSP|LAB|HOSP|202602051200||ADT^A01
PID|1||MRN10294||DOE^JANE||19850214|F
PV1|1|I|WARD3^12^A||||1234^SMITH^JOHN
EVN|A01|202602051200
Simplified structure of an HL7 v2 ADT^A01 — header, patient, visit, and event segments.
HL7 INTEGRATION SERVICES WE PROVIDE
Building point-to-point or engine-mediated interfaces that send, receive, and acknowledge HL7 messages between two systems.
Configuring the specific message types and trigger events your workflows depend on — ADT, ORM, ORU, SIU, and others.
Mapping fields and segments between systems with different data models, including code sets, units, and identifiers.
Connecting hospital information systems, labs, pharmacies, and clinical applications into a coherent data exchange setup.
Building and maintaining HL7 interfaces to and from your EHR for admissions, orders, results, and scheduling data.
Auditing and rebuilding legacy interfaces that have become fragile, undocumented, or difficult to change safely.
HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS WE INTEGRATE USING HL7
HL7 messaging connects the core clinical and administrative systems that run day-to-day operations across a health system.
Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, MEDITECH, NextGen, and other HL7-capable EHR platforms.
Core HIS platforms handling admissions, scheduling, and billing events across a facility.
LIS platforms sending order and result messages (ORM/ORU) back to ordering systems.
Pharmacy and medication management platforms exchanging order and dispensing data.
Care documentation, monitoring, and workflow tools that need real-time visibility into clinical events.
Data warehouses and analytics platforms consuming HL7 feeds for reporting and downstream use.
HL7 INTEGRATION USE CASES
Moving encounter, diagnosis, and procedure data between systems involved in a patient's care.
Keeping patient demographics and identifiers consistent across every connected system.
Delivering orders to the LIS and routing results back to the ordering provider automatically.
Synchronizing medication orders and dispensing events between the EHR and pharmacy system.
Propagating admission, discharge, and transfer events to every downstream system that needs to react to them.
Ensuring results and clinical notifications reach the right system and the right recipient without manual follow-up.
Event Occurs
admit · order · result
HL7 Message
ADT / ORM / ORU
Interface Engine
route + transform
Receiving System
LIS · Pharmacy · App
ACK/NACK acknowledgment returned to sender on every message delivery
HL7 INTEGRATION STANDARDS AND MESSAGE TYPES
HL7 v2 remains the standard underneath the majority of production healthcare interfaces. Within it, a handful of message types account for most clinical and administrative traffic.
The messaging standard itself — segment-based, delimiter-formatted, and triggered by discrete events.
Admit, Discharge, Transfer — patient demographic and encounter events.
Order messages — new and updated orders sent to labs, pharmacy, or other ancillary systems.
Observation result messages — lab, radiology, and other results returned to the ordering system.
Scheduling information — appointment creation, updates, and cancellations.
HL7 INTERFACE ENGINE INTEGRATION
An interface engine sits between your systems and handles the routing, transformation, and error handling that would otherwise be duplicated across every point-to-point interface. Instead of every system needing to understand every other system's message format, each system talks to the engine, and the engine translates.
We integrate with established engines — Mirth Connect, Rhapsody, Cloverleaf — and, where an engine isn't in place, help you evaluate whether one is warranted for your interface volume.
POINT-TO-POINT (N×N connections)
EHR↔LIS
EHR↔Pharm
EHR↔App
LIS↔Pharm
WITH INTERFACE ENGINE (each system connects once)
HL7 INTERFACE ENGINE
Routing · Transformation · Queuing · Error Handling
EHR
LIS
Pharmacy
Clinical App
HL7 INTEGRATION ARCHITECTURE
The right HL7 architecture depends on how many systems you're connecting and how much message volume flows between them. A handful of stable connections can run point-to-point; anything beyond that benefits from a central interface engine that handles routing, transformation, queuing, and error recovery in one place.
SOURCE SYSTEMS
EHR
HIS
LIS
Pharmacy
HL7 INTERFACE ENGINE
Routing · Transformation · Queuing · Error Handling · ACK/NACK · Dead-letter queue
DOWNSTREAM CONSUMERS
Clinical Applications
Data Platform
External Partners
OUR HL7 INTEGRATION DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Every engagement begins with the actual systems and message formats involved — not a generic project template.
We identify which systems need to exchange data, which events should trigger messages, and what the current state of any existing interfaces looks like.
We define the message types, segments, and fields involved, and map them against each system's data model and code sets.
We decide whether interfaces run point-to-point or through an interface engine, based on system count and message volume.
We build or configure the interfaces, including message construction, transformation logic, and acknowledgment handling.
We test message accuracy, trigger conditions, and error scenarios against real clinical workflows before go-live.
We deploy the interfaces, monitor message flow in production, and support them as connected systems change over time.
HL7 DATA MAPPING AND TRANSFORMATION
The majority of HL7 integration issues in production trace back to mapping — a code set that doesn't match, a segment that's optional in one system and required in another, a field that's formatted differently between sender and receiver.
We treat mapping as its own deliverable, documented and testable, rather than something resolved ad hoc during development.
Sending System
Raw HL7 v2 message · source field formats
Transform
field · code set · terminology · format
Validation
Conformance check · ACK / error log
Receiving System
Correctly mapped · delivery confirmed
HL7 INTEGRATION VS. FHIR INTEGRATION
Most enterprise healthcare environments run HL7 v2 and FHIR side by side rather than choosing one exclusively. Knowing where each fits shapes how an integration should be architected.
| Dimension | HL7 (v2) | FHIR |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Delimiter-based messages (segments and fields) | JSON or XML resources |
| Transport | Message-based (MLLP, file, or engine-mediated) | RESTful HTTP APIs |
| Trigger model | Event-driven messages (ADT, ORM, ORU, SIU) | API calls: read, search, subscribe |
| Typical use | Core hospital and lab/pharmacy messaging, deeply embedded in legacy systems | Modern app-to-system data access, patient access APIs |
| Where it's strong | High-volume, established clinical event messaging | Application integration, mobile and web-facing data access |
Building both? See FHIR Integration Services for the API-based side of interoperability.
WHY CHOOSE PEERBITS FOR HL7 INTEGRATION?
HL7 interfaces break when upstream systems update, and they need someone who understands the message format well enough to diagnose and fix problems fast.
We work directly with segments, fields, and trigger events — not just the general idea of HL7 connectivity.
Our teams have built and maintained interfaces against the systems hospitals and labs run in production today.
We document field and code-set mappings explicitly, so interfaces are auditable and maintainable after we hand them off.
Interfaces break when upstream systems change. We stay engaged to catch and fix that before it affects patient care.
HL7 INTEGRATION PROJECT EXPERIENCE
Every HL7 integration project we take on starts with the same groundwork: which systems are involved, which message types they already send or expect, and where the existing interfaces (if any) are fragile or undocumented. From there, the scope is shaped by real constraints — message volume, whether an interface engine is already in place, and how much tolerance the environment has for downtime during cutover.
Because HL7 environments vary so much from one hospital or health system to the next, we'd rather walk you through relevant project experience and technical approach directly than summarize it in generic terms here. If you're evaluating a partner for an HL7 integration project, we're glad to go through the specifics that apply to your systems.
Talk to a Healthcare Integration ExpertReal HL7 interfaces, EHR connections, and interoperability projects delivered for healthcare organizations.
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Peerbits designed a reusable interoperability demonstration connecting a React and Node.js application to Epic's FHIR R4 sandbox through SMART on FHIR authentication — proving real EHR connectivity, multi-resource retrieval, governed write-back, and
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Remote patient monitoring app helps to bridge the gap between patients and healthcare providers. It tracks the vitals of the patients and sends it to the doctors.
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A healthcare startup struggled with increasing loads of data and manual infrastructure management as its business expanded. Peerbits successfully built cloud infrastructure using AWS for their system possessing auto-scaling, automated and more.
HL7 integration is the practice of connecting healthcare systems using HL7 messaging standards, primarily HL7 Version 2, so systems like EHRs, laboratories, and pharmacies can exchange clinical and administrative data through structured, event-triggered messages.
HL7 integration services cover interface development, message mapping and transformation, interface engine configuration, testing and validation, and ongoing support for HL7-based data exchange between healthcare systems.
Systems exchange discrete HL7 messages, such as ADT, ORM, and ORU messages, that are triggered by real-world events like an admission, an order being placed, or a result becoming available. An interface engine routes, transforms, and delivers those messages between the connected systems.
HL7 is commonly used to integrate EHR systems, hospital information systems, laboratory information systems, pharmacy systems, clinical applications, and healthcare data platforms.
HL7 interface development is the work of building and configuring the interfaces that send, receive, and transform HL7 messages between two systems, including defining trigger events, mapping message segments, and handling acknowledgments.
ADT (Admit, Discharge, Transfer) messages communicate patient demographic and encounter events, such as admissions, discharges, transfers, and registration updates, between healthcare systems.
HL7 v2 integration is integration built on HL7 Version 2, the most widely deployed HL7 messaging standard in production healthcare systems, which uses pipe- and component-delimited message segments.
An HL7 interface engine is middleware that routes, transforms, and manages delivery of HL7 messages between multiple systems, centralizing message translation and error handling instead of requiring separate point-to-point interfaces for every connection.
HL7 v2 messaging is event-triggered and message-based, using a delimiter-formatted structure. FHIR is HL7's newer standard, built on RESTful APIs and structured resources. Most established healthcare environments run substantial HL7 v2 infrastructure alongside newer FHIR-based integrations. See our FHIR Integration Services page for more.
HL7 provides a common, long-established messaging format that most clinical and administrative systems already support, allowing healthcare organizations to exchange core data without building a custom format for every system pair.
Yes. An interface engine or middleware layer can translate HL7 v2 messages into modern formats such as JSON, REST, or FHIR resources that contemporary applications are built to consume.
Peerbits provides end-to-end HL7 integration services, including system assessment, interface and message design, development, testing, deployment, and ongoing support for healthcare organizations and health tech product teams.
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Ask our expertsTechnical guides on HL7 integration, EHR connectivity, and healthcare data exchange.
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