Healthcare Message Test Generation

For more information, visit: http://hl7v2tools.nist.gov/

NIST has built and continues to develop a tool kit that supports the testing of HL7 V2 message interfaces based on the concept of message profiles. The foundation of the tool kit is a set of Java APIs that supports testing activities such as automated message generation and message validation. The APIs can be used to build tools, web services, web applications, or they can be incorporated into 3rd party applications and testing environments.

Using the APIs, NIST has developed a number of tools. These include Message Maker, a tool that creates a suite of test message instances for any given profile and an HL7 V2 Message Validation web application that validates message instances based on uploaded profiles or preloaded IHE profiles. NIST provides web services for message validation and profile validation. NIST is extending its toolkit to support an actor based testing framework and a message validation tool to administer and analyze the results of the tests. Delivery of the tools will be standalone applications, web services, and web applications. In addition, NIST is collaborating with partners such as IHE Gazelle, Cypress healthcare test tools group, CCHIT, and DVTk to integrate the tool kit into these extensive testing environments. NIST also takes a lead role in the HL7 implementation and conformance technical committee.