Posting HL7 Messages To Your Web Service

 

Overview

 

The UltraPort HL7 Postmaster can integrate with your own custom web service (internet connection is required). As with all destinations you define the "matching instructions" which will identify which HL7 messages qualify for delivery to the web service.

 

When configured the postmaster will write "qualifying" HL7 messages to a "Message Queue" folder and then communicate with your web service via a set of secure URLs provided by you via encoded XML HTTP Posts. It includes user credentials (Logon ID and Password) and even gives you the ability to dynamically assign different URLS at run time. It does this in 2 stages.

 

Stage 1: The postmaster will 'ping' the starting URL with the credentials entered into the Web Service destination profile in an XML format asking permission to post HL7 messages. If access is granted your web service will respond with an XML structure containing the secure URL which it would like the postmaster to use for posting the HL7 message.

 

Stage 2: After successfully completing Stage 1, the postmaster will then "post" the HL7 message to your web service at that URL in a predefined simple XML format. Once posted your web service must return a pre-defined XML acknowledgement stating that the message was received successfully or an EXCEPTION indicating that some type of error occurred.

 

Security. Although all HL7 message data sent or received by the UltraPort HL7 Postmaster is always encoded and never "human-readable" it is your CONNECTION to the web service which provides all of the real security. If your web service is internet based (as opposed to Intranet based) it is highly recommended that ALL of the URLs used to communicate with the web service be secure (HTTPS) and that your website use secure certificates from a recognized certificate issuer and be of adequate "cypher-strength" to meet any governmental or regulatory encryption requirements for the transmission of private patient medical information.

 

TLS (Transport Layer Security) and the Microsoft .Net Framework.  When posting XML to your web service you might need to insure that on the computer which is running the Postmaster the .Net Framework library used by the Postmaster will (by default) post to your web service using the highest protocol available.

 

For instance, Version 1.0 of the HL7+ UltraPort HL7 Postmaster uses the Microsoft .Net Framework version 4, if your web server requires TLS 1.2 (as it should) and will not accept connections using a lesser TLS protocol (which it should not) you MIGHT need to insure that on the client computer the .Net Framework is configured to post data using the higher protocol. You can verify this by checking your registry entry and make sure that you have the DWORD registry keys shown below.

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319]

"SystemDefaultTlsVersions"=dword:00000001

"SchUseStrongCrypto"=dword:00000001

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319]

"SystemDefaultTlsVersions"=dword:00000001

"SchUseStrongCrypto"=dword:00000001