How do I pull data out of an EPIC EMR?

Question

My tool needs to intake data from an EPIC EMR. My understanding is that the hospital can write a script that will push the data to a secure FTP, where I can pull the data down and load it into my system. Is this correct? Also - my understanding is that this data will be in HL7 - is this correct? Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

Firstly , befor pulling data from a hospital EMR get an approval with the hospital's CMO, CIO, CMIO (if they have one) and HIPAA officials.

(HL7 support is a core requirement of every inpatient EMR RFP.)

Two examples: (1) Cerner runs on Oracle and provides both HL7 support and an API to an abstract data layer, but not to the Oracle base tables, and

(2) Epic runs on a MUMPS backend, provides HL7 support, but does not allow direct access to the MUMPS globals.

Once you have the proper permissions and authorizations in place, work with the hospital's IT staff to coordinate real-time HL7 connections between your system and the hospital's EMR. You'll need their help in decoding the structure and contents of certain HL7 messages, the definition of which varies from vendor to vendor.

If you are fortunate, the hospital EMR supports XML-encoded HL7 v3, which provides store and forward data transfers over public networks, and a robust approach to data encoding. But don't count on it.

Capture the incoming HL7 messages into an OLAP database.

Develop software that parses the EMR data from the HL7 messages, transforms the EMR data for loading into a fully normalized (5NF) clinical datawarehouse, then loads the data into the CDW.