Appendix 7 Significant changes (Informative)

Owned by Brett Esler
Jul 07, 2021
3 min read

202101 release

1. Addition of acknowledgement chapter 8.
2. Addition of Addressing messages using Australian Profile for Provider Directory Services Appendix 10.
3. Appendix titles now indicate either Informative or Normative.
4. Addition of Escape sequences in Text Fields chapter 3.

- Table of Contents added for sections missing them that contain sub section headings.
- Table of Contents expanded for several sections to include deeper child section headings.
- Introduction chapter expanded to include Radiology and Referral context.
- Repetition separator not included in maximum field length counts.
- MSH-10 field size increased to 199
- MSH-18 Repeats not allowed.
- MSH-22 to 27 Fields added.
- MSH-27 Security Handling Instructions added.
- MSH-12 Internal Version IDs defined.
- MSH-21 Conformance statements defined.
- PID-1 required in the Australian context.
- PV1-1 required in the Australian context.
- First repeat of PV1-9 in an ORU is use to identify the target provider of each message. Consulting doctors can be specified in the second or following repeats of this field.
- PV2-39 to 47 Fields added.
- Multiple faults in examples corrected
- Additional CE code systems added.
- ED Mime types must be treated case insensitively
- Addition of XCN FHIR qualification in component 16.
- Other than order messages the OBR-3 Filler Order number must be present and qualified with the site identifier.
- OBR-5 and OBR-6 deprecated
- Addition of CNE and CWE datatypes for OBX-2
- For each display format there must be only one 'AUSPDI' OBX segment.
- Highlighting must be achieved by means other than colour for Atomic data to accommodate colour blind readers.
- Addition of Prescriber Identifier Type
- Addition of Vendor Directory Identifier Type
- UPIN must be used for Australian Medicare Provider numbers.
- RRI segments RF1, PID and PRD have been made optional for backward compatibility due to security considerations for personally identifying information.
- RF1-6 and RF1-11 increased to 250 characters
- RF1-7 Effective Date required.
- When a corrected referral snapshot is sent, all information from the previous snapshot identified by the same RF1-6 Originating referral identifier (EI) must be replaced with the current snapshot. e.g. Allergies, Medication, Results, etc.
- PRD-2 and PRD-7 values must be populated in PRD segments including the PRD-1 role of IR "Intended Recipient"
- Correcting referrals sent in error is now possible.
- OBR-16 is not necessarily the sender or recipient.
- Conformance statement rewording
- Conformance statement numbering fixed where incorrect.
- Conformance - Z segments must not be used in messages.
- Conformance - Receivers must present all messages for triage when the intended recipient is either unrecognised or not supplied.
- Conformance - SMD use of HD datatype clarifications
- Conformance - EI datatype must be valued and for each document/report must be unique within the sender facility namespace (HD).
- Conformance - \ originally incorrectly escaped as \S\ and should be \E\
- Conformance - Receivers must not ignore segments that are present but not expected.
- Conformance - OBX-3 must be valued according to the APUTS standard where a code is available.
- Conformance - A PRD segment where PRD-1 contains IR must have at least one PRD-7 repeat.
- Multiple corrections to example messages.
- OBR-20 Filler Field 1 (ST), made instruction in allowable code table consistent with RC=Y example.

Example: Use of Structured Numeric (SN) datatype added

Significant changes in the following sections:

7.1.2.1 Addressing
The provider or facility identifier (in PRD-7) for the PRD marked with IR meaning "Intended Recipient" (in PRD-1) is used to address each instance of the message to an endpoint. Appendix 10 defines field mapping for addressing individual instances of a REF message to a provider or healthcare facility when using the Australian Profile for Provider Directory Services.

HL7au:00045.7 (r2)
If not, the sending SMD agent must produce an error acknowledgement and return it to the sending application. When using Australian Profile for Provider Directory Services, the sending SMD agent must ensure that it has registered endpoints containing au-receivingfacility that match the outbound message's MSH-4 and au-receivingapplication match MSH-3.

Appendix 8: Substantial changes.


201808 release

  1. Addition of Patient referral chapter and associated appendixes, HL7v2 VMR.
  2. Removal of first ORC segment (prior to the OBR and OBX before PV1) from REF_I12 message structure. The reason, is alignment with the international standard message structure. Note this may break previous messages which were conformant with AS4700.6 because that segment was mandatory in that standard and we were advised that this it broke the HL7 rules for local extensions. Whether or not it would break parsing of previous messages would depend upon parser behaviour.
  3. Updated METeOR code in chapter 2.


201701 release

  1. Removal of Site Sequence Number clauses as it is expected users will use ACK's.
  2. Updated METeOR codes where required.
  3. Updated references to AS 4846-2014 rather than the superseded AS 4846-2006 and AS 5017-2006.
  4. Inclusion of Patient Administrations segments for pathology ie MSH, PV1, PID
  5. Re-structuring of conformance points into a table, separating out each point into an individual item.
  6. Added PDF Conformance PDF/A-1b which off the shelf PDF validators can assess.
  7. Deprecation of PIT
  8. Development of more detailed conformance points in an appendix