With ConnectR support being dropped by Allscripts after 11.4.1, a move to its Common Interface Engine (CIE) is now imminent for Allscripts EEHR customers. Although this may be seen as a daunting task by many, the outcome will far outweigh the work needed to get there. CIE is based upon Orion’s Rhapsody suite and is primarily composed of four major parts: the Rhapsody engine, the IDE, web-based monitoring and the EDI toolset. The engine is the backbone of the system, working in conjunction with the other components to deliver a robust solution that allows for a far more granular approach to interface design than its predecessor, ConnectR.
The Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a visual development tool that provides drag and drop components for every point of your interface. It includes support for multiple types of source and target connections and data formats. Multiple engines can be connected to from a single IDE session and an extremely useful help and reference set is included.
The EDI tools consist of EDI explorer, EDI Message Designer and EDI Map Designer. All tools are accessible from the IDE or as standalone programs from the start menu. These tools provide a means for developing and testing your interfaces that was not found with ConnectR. EDI Explorer lets the user connect, send test data and view responses using imported message definitions or new message definitions created in the EDI Message Designer. Data can be transformed and mapped in EDI Map Designer and scripting can be performed using Rhapsody’s Symphonia language (Java based).
Web-based monitoring is available from anywhere on the domain and allows interface administrators to delegate day to day monitoring and error-handling without giving access to the IDE. A solid message search feature, notification configuration and user-management are also included.
The reconciler feature, available to be added for error-handling in any route from the IDE, is another feature that gives administrators the ability to separate high level support functions away from the design of the interfaces. Pushing unfiled messages (unmatched results, items not found in the OID, etc) to the error queue within Allscripts EEHR allows reconciliation and re-filing to be handled without having to give access to any CIE components.
Although tools for ConnectR to CIE migration are still being developed, with the right planning, support, training and time, a successful shift to CIE can be achieved without too many headaches and/or disruptions. The end result is an interface design tool that will radically improve dataflow between systems in terms of accuracy and manageability and allow support to be handled at all levels of your EHR team.
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