Quick Start Guide

Accessing Data

You may access data through the HL7Browser by using the Open File command from the file menu or by clicking the Open icon on the main browser window. Alternatively, you could pass a file name to the program on the command line, or even pipe data to it, perhaps using grep or some other pre-processor.

Browsing Data

With data in the HL7Browser window the data is initially loaded in an unparsed form. A single click of the record will cause it to be parsed into segments. A single click of the segments will cause them to be parsed into fields. Once they are parsed you can open and close nodes by double clicking on them.

Searching

The icon that looks like a magnifying glass lets you search forwards or backwards through the data to find patterns that match what you supply. Only the first match in a given record will be highlighted.

Filtering

On the HL7Browser window the icon that looks like a funnel lets you filter you data to only see the records you want. Click on the filter icon and a new HL7Browser window will appear along with a dialog box asking for some expression to filter on. Enter whatever you want to search for (regular expressions allowed) and that data will be selected and brought into the new window. You can also duplicate your original data by not specifying anything in the filter dialog.

Editing

You can edit records, segments, fields, repetitions, components and subcomponents within the HL7 Browser window. To do so select a record by left clicking on it. Then right-clicking anywhere in the window will open up a text field for you to edit that component in. If you are on a Mac, try to hold down the apple key and click to edit. You might have to do it twice.

Generating Reports

Once you have data loaded into an HL7Browser window, you can generate reports on that data. Click on the report icon (which looks a bit like a spreadsheet) and a new empty report window will open. This window is tied to the browser window you opened it from, so don't get your windows confused if you have many open.

With your report window open, you basically enter a column name in the first text field and a search critera in the second then click the green checkmark (add button) to add that column to your report. An example of this might be "Name, PID:5", or "Last Name, PID:5-0-1". If you decide you don't want a given column in the report, click the dropdown menu next to the red X and then click the red X (remove button) and your report will be adjusted.

Saving Data

Within either the browser window you will have the option to save your data. If you've loaded the data from a log file or any file containing HL7 data mixed in with non-HL7 data this save operation will save just the HL7 data, allowing you to "clean" your data. Additionally, if you've filtered your data on some critera, just the data in your filtered report will be saved.

If you have data in a report window and wish to save from there The data will be saved in a tab delimited format. The first line will be the names of the columns, the rest will be the data as it appears in your report.