This is a very common problem in HL7. Some systems expect textual reports to be formatted into an OBX or NTE segment with a repeating field, while others want each line of the report in its NTE. For instance:
MSH|^~&| NTE|||Patient's head appeared to be potatoe shaped.~Spoke of needing to get back to the other~toys and mentioned Woody.|
or
MSH|^~&| NTE|||Patient's head appeared to be potatoe shaped.| NTE|||Spoke of needing to get back to the other| NTE|||toys and mentioned Woody.|
Both forms can be easily supported using the Translator. Here is a rough example:
Here’s a copy-paste-able snippet:
local Report = "Patient's head appeared to be potatoe shaped.\nSpoke of needing to get back to the other\ntoys and mentioned Woody." local UseOneNte = true function main(Data) local Out = hl7.message{vmd='example/demo.vmd', name='Lab'} local Lines = Split(Report, "\n") print("There are "..#Lines.." lines in the report.") if (UseOneNte) then for i=1, #Lines do Out.NTE[1][3][i] = Lines[i] end else for i=1, #Lines do Out.NTE[i][3][1] = Lines[i] end end Out:S() end function Split(str, delim, maxNb) -- Eliminate bad cases... if string.find(str, delim) == nil then return { str } end if maxNb == nil or maxNb < 1 then maxNb = 0 -- No limit end local result = {} local pat = "(.-)" .. delim .. "()" local nb = 0 local lastPos for part, pos in string.gfind(str, pat) do nb = nb + 1 result[nb] = part lastPos = pos if nb == maxNb then break end end -- Handle the last field if nb ~= maxNb then result[nb + 1] = string.sub(str, lastPos) end return result end