Philips Efficia CM Series - Notation Conventions; Block Format

Serial Data Export
Efficia CM Series Data Export Guide 3-3
Message Conventions
Note — For a complete description of HL7 message syntax, see the Health Level Seven
Standard Version 2.4 available from Health Level Seven International
(www.hl7.org).
Notation Conventions
The HL7 messages use the following notation conventions:
• Single ASCII characters are enclosed in single quotes.
• Special characters or non-printing ASCII characters are enclosed in angle brackets, <
>. Special characters are the Lower Layer Protocol (LLP) Start Block and End Block
characters. Non-printing ASCII characters can be written as abbreviations; for
example, ESC for the Escape character. They also may be written as hex values in
the form 0xXX, where X is a hexadecimal digit. For example, in Standard ASCII,
<ESC> is <0x1B >.
• The HL7 Minimal Lower Layer Protocol (MLLP) is used to mark message boundaries.
Block Format
HL7 messages are enclosed by special characters to form a block. The format is as
follows:
<SB>ddddd<EB><CR>
where:
<SB> = Start Block character (1 byte). The ASCII vertical tab character <VT>, for example,
<0x0B>. Do not confuse this with the ASCII characters SOH or STX.
ddddd = Data (variable number of bytes). This is the HL7 data content of the block. The
data can contain any ASCII characters and the carriage return character <CR>, as a
delimiter of individual message segments. UTF-8 encoding is used for languages that
cannot use ASCII characters.
<EB> = End Block character (1 byte). The ASCII field separator character <FS>, for
example, <0x1C>. Do not confuse this with the ASCII characters ETX or EOT.
<CR> = Carriage Return (1 byte). The ASCII carriage return character, for example, <0x0D>.