Mirth Connect

Mirth Connect is a cross-platform interface engine used in the healthcare industry that enables the management of information using bi-directional sending of many types of messages.

Channel

A Mirth channel is an interface that routes, filters, and transforms messages from one source to one or many destinations. These channels can also be chained together for more complex logic.

Development Environment

You can launch an instance of Mirth Connect using docker compose

docker-compose --profile mirth-connect up

You can then view the mirth connect web application via your web browser by visiting http://localhost:8080. This will also expose a TCP listener at http://localhost:6661 . You can send a test message to mirth connect by using the below bash script:

./sh/send-hl7.sh SenderApp SenderFacility ReceiverApp ReceiverFacility ADT 127.0.0.1 6661

This script will send a ADT-A01 message to the mirth connect TCP listener. If you have a source Channel configured to listen for such messages it will be processed. For more information on how to configure a channel, follow the official documentation.

Administrator Application

The web application the docker image exposes isn’t used to configure integrations. For that you need to download the administrator application. The administrator connects to the instance of mirth connect allowing you to configure channels. Instructions for installing the administrator application can be found by visiting http://localhost:8080/. The default username/password combination for the administrator application is admin/admin.

Example Channel

mirth_connect_channels/HL7 ADT A01 MEG REST API.xml is an example Channel that can be imported into mirth connect via the administrator application GUI.

A channel can be imported by following the below steps:

  • open the mirth connect administrator application

  • click the channels button in the sidebar

  • click import channel button in the sidebar

  • follow the steps to import the channel from XML

  • you may need to restart your docker container to use the channel

It can parse a ADT-A01 message, extract patient data and submit that data to MEG’s REST API. This Channel is configured to work with a containerized instance of MEG running in the same container environment as mirth connect. You can configure the audit form, ward and auditor it targets by editing the associated transformer steps:

  • click the channels button in the sidebar, and select the channel your imported.

  • select the destination connector from the navigation tabs in the channel UI.

  • click “Edit transformer steps” in the sidebar.

  • there is a transformer step for each configurable parameter of the destination script.

The Channel destination contains Javascript that sends the API request to MEG. You’ll need to update the observation data generated here to match the field names in your target audit form.