Question: How are alerts exchanged in v2?

Oct 15, 2012

Question:

How are “High Risk Alerts” communicated between HIS and PACS? If there is a ‘High Risk Alert’ created for patient (ex . Pace Maker), in which HL7 Message should be communicated to PACS?

Answer:

There’s nothing explicitly defined for this kind of alert in HL7 v2 so far as I can see. The segment IAM is for “Patient adverse reaction information” (defined in v2.4) and could definitely carry related information around alerts, but not that kind of alert.

If it was up to me, and given the context of HIS –> PACS communication, which pretty much implies ADT, I’d use the OBX segment for Observation/Result that appears in most ADT messages. I think that’s within it’s intended purpose, though information about the purpose of the OBX segment in the sp