October 22, 2003

In preparation for the 2003 National Immunization Registry Conference, October 27 in Atlanta, QS announced today a real-time HL7 immunization registry interface for its commercial off-the-shelf public health clinic management system, Insight. Insight is the first commercial clinical software package to include a real-time, two-way HL7 interface to immunization registries.

Developed earlier this year, the HL7 real-time interface (HL7RTI) allows Insight to interface in real time with an immunization registry using HL7. The interface conforms to Implementation Guide for Immunization Data Transactions using Version 2.3.1 of the HL7 Standard Protocol Version 2.1 from the CDC.

The HL7RTI was developed for first deployment in Marion County, Indiana, interfacing with the CHIRP immunization registry. It has been successfully tested with QS' own Insight-IR registry and CHIRP registry software from Scientific Technologies. The software supports the six basic HL7 messages used by registries: VXQ, VXR, VXX, ACK, QCK and VXU, providing secure transport using the HTTPS protocol, the same technque that is widely used to secure financial transactions on the Internet.

QS President, Kevin Davidson, said:

QS has been building immunization systems since our start back in 1980. HL7RTI takes advantage of the HL7 expertise we gained developing our own Insight-IR immunization registry. QS builds software just for public health, and immunization registries are key to disease prevention in the community.

We've done batch interfaces to various immunization registries for years, but while those interfaces helped state reporting systems, they did little to enhance local clinical practice. Now with HL7RTI, the clinic user has the full benefit of the registry integrated into their own database, permitting decision support, reporting and reminder/recall.

We designed the interface to work with little or no user intervention. Users just register patients, look at immunization histories and administer vaccines. The only time a user is involved with the registry is when possible duplicate patients have to be resolved.

There have been discussions with some of the large practice management vendors about adding HL7 capability to their systems. To date, it's been mostly talk, and the talk is about "one-way" interfaces. I don't see how a one-way interface helps the clinic user very much. At QS, we have the clinic user at the forefront of our thinking. Perhaps the priority we give immunization registry interfaces comes from our focus on public health, rather than private practice software.

As more immunization registries begin to implement real-time HL7 interfaces, we hope that our groundbreaking achievement will show the way for other software vendors to follow.

Mr. Davidson will be presenting a paper at the 2003 NIRC, titled Adapting Vendor Clinical Systems for Real-Time Registry Participation using HL7. HL7RTI will be released as a standard component of Insight 5.1, with general availability December 1, 2003. HL7RTI includes iNTERFACEWARE Chameleon messaging technology.

QS Technologies, located in Greenville, SC, is a national provider of software for public health and vital records.