Primary Integration Engineer |
The Primary Integration Engineer's main responsibility is to set up the initial infrastructure and implement a point-of-care (POC) interface. They are also responsible for ensuring that either Chameleon or Iguana has the necessary infrastructure to work in their environment.
If the customer is a Software Vendor, this role includes integrating the vendor's product with Chameleon and/or Iguana to allow the Field Integration Engineers to perform their site by site integrations. The Primary Integration Engineer needs deeper technical skills than the Field Integration Engineers but does not necessarily need the same degree of people skills. Ideally they should be expected to do some of the site integrations themselves (especially the initial one) using the infrastructure they have developed to get a feel for how the system is used by the Field Integration Engineers.
The effort required from this role depends on the interfacing product being used:
| Interfacing Product | Description | Skills Required |
|---|---|---|
| Standard Iguana | The effort required for vendors using Iguana is minimal. A Primary Integration engineer using Standard Iguana only needs to ensure that Iguana and their application can effectively communicate via a shared database for the purposes of generating and/or parsing messages. This means a shared database schema is developed and exposed to Iguana via a table grammar specification. Once this is achieved, the Primary Integration Engineer then implements the company's first interface by setting up a VMD file and adding a channel in Iguana. |
An individual with basic database, SQL, and scripting knowledge can successfully carry out this function. |
| Iguana + Client Executable | In this case, the customer has opted to leverage Iguana's operational infrastructure in terms of message delivery, logging, etc. while still writing their own custom code using the Chameleon SDK to parse and generate HL7. A Primary Integration Engineer, in this case, is responsible for ensuring that their application can effectively communicate with Iguana through either the static or dynamic Chameleon API for the purposes of generating and/or parsing messages. This means that a specific function must be implemented by the engineer that interacts with the Chameleon engine object at the code level. Once this is achieved, the Primary Integration Engineer then implements the company's first interface by setting up a VMD file and adding a channel in Iguana. |
An individual with basic programming skills and scripting knowledge can successfully carry out this function. |
| Chameleon SDK | In this case, the customer has opted to implement the operational aspects of messaging (ie. delivery, logging, monitoring, administration, etc.) themselves. They have also opted to leverage the Chameleon SDK directly at the code level in order to parse and generate HL7. A Primary Integration Engineer, in this case, is responsible for implementing a good deal of infrastructure in order to add Chameleon's messaging capabilities into their software application. Not only are they responsible for delivering specific data fields to Chameleon (in the case of message generation) and taking specific data fields from Chameleon (in the case of message parsing), they are also responsible for implementing safe and reliable message delivery (via TCP/IP, batch file etc.), success and error logging, administrative control over the HL7 gateway, etc. Although the Chameleon SDK does provide some helper components to make the Primary Integration Engineer's job easier (ex. networking components that implement the LLP protocol), there is still a good deal of work for the engineer to do in this scenario, which is why the majority of iNTERFACEWARE customers opt for an Iguana approach instead. Once the infrastructure has been implemented and the messaging capabilities of the Chameleon SDK have been built into the vendor's application, the Primary Integration Engineer then implements the company's first interface by setting up a VMD file and testing out the implementation. |
An individual with medium to senior level programming skills is required in this function, especially if messages are to be delivered via TCP/IP since a good understanding of asynchronous programming is needed. Specifically, the individual should possess:
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One problem with using Primary Integration Engineers as Field Integration Engineers is that they will often use back doors in the software to achieve their work, which results in HL7 interfaces that are excessively complicated for other people to maintain. A poorly written HL7 interface is one that requires the author of the code to have a copy of Visual Studio to step through the debugger to resolve problems at customer sites. This is a common business scalability issue especially when a pure Chameleon SDK approach is adopted. It generally occurs with companies that have gone through a start-up growth phase where they have started with a single software engineer doing HL7 integration and then moved into model where multiple people are required to manage the HL7 integration. It can also happen in larger organizations where there is not a good process for ensuring that engineering teams are meeting the needs of service personnel. | ||
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