sequencial or concurrent hl7 message processing

Question

I was wondering what kind of concurrency models do folks do to process inbound hl7 messages (adt,...) and persist them in a normalized data model (relational or no-sql).

I am struggling with the thought of sequential message processing (mapping to a nosql db) and multi-threading when transforming/processing them from the (java, .net, whatever):

example: if I process messages received and transformed by clover leaf (transformed to be compliant with an internal web/rest api expected payload), and set to an internal web/rest api server (multi threaded java web app) then i can't guarantee I am parsing the messages sequentially due to threading.

if I process messages sequentially then mapping will be slow...

Answer 1

Whether you can process the messages asynchronously depends on the characteristics of the messages, and your processing logic. Consider this sequence:

1. you get a registration for a new patient
2. you get an episode listed against the patient
3. you get a merge message merging the new patient with a different patient

If you process the last message before the second last one, what happens? will you treat it as an error because you have a new episode on a merged patient?

This is why there is no simple answer to the question. It depends