Tag Archive for: code generation

January 1 HIPAA Deadline Has Wide Impact

David McGahey
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Every day tens of thousands of encrypted data transactions occur between health care providers, pharmacies, insurers, medical billing services, and employers who provide worker health coverage. Everyone in the United States covered by health or dental insurance depends on the automation, accuracy, and security of these largely unnoticed data streams to verify eligibility and process payments for nearly all medical services. Definition of messaging standards for these transactions are mandated by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), passed in 1992 and administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. By January 1, 2012, all health care enterprises covered under HIPAA are required to transfer data in version 5010, the latest HIPAA standard, based on ANSI X12.

Migrating Existing Data Formats To and From the Latest Standards

Altova MapForce is a powerful and flexible tool used by developers and IT professionals in many industries to automate today’s complex data conversions. The screenshot below shows a portion of a real-world example of a complex HIPAA data mapping in Altova MapForce from one state’s ANSI X12 eligibility file to integrate membership file data for public sector healthcare.  

HIPAA Data Mapping

Altova MapForce 2012 enables visual mapping to and from all transaction sets that are required to comply with HIPAA regulations. If you are a developer working for an organization in the healthcare industry, you can map HIPAA messages to or from XML, databases, flat files, Excel 2007+, and Web services, then generate royalty-free code in Java, C#, or C++ for your data transformation to integrate internal healthcare data formats and the HIPAA standards. MapForce includes an example mapping from a HIPAA message to XML format, along with a sample data file and XML schema, so you can generate XML output using the MapForce built-in execution engine. The screen shot below shows the MapForce example mapping, including the pop-up help available by rolling the cursor over any HIPAA message element.   MapForce HIPAA example mapping MapForce allows users to apply mathematical, string, or logical functions, and other conversions, as data is transformed between the source and destination, illustrated by the parse-date function at the bottom center of the mapping image. Of course, privacy issues forbid distribution of an actual patient health care record, so the MapForce example HIPPA message content shown below is describing a fictitious person, but the message format is valid and the example is an effective demonstration of mapping functionality. When you click the Output button at the bottom of the mapping window, MapForce extracts the selected fields from the sample HIPAA message and transforms them to the XML version.   XML Output from HIPAA example For one-time data conversion needs, MapForce lets you save the results displayed in the Output window. MapForce also integrates with Altova StyleVision to apply style sheets that format data mapping output to HTML, RTF, PDF, or Microsoft Word formats.

HIPAA Message Formats Supported by MapForce

MapForce supports version 5010 for all the following key X12 transaction types included in the HIPAA January 1, 2012 mandate:

  • 270-B1 — Health Care Eligibility Benefit Inquiry
  • 271-B1 — Health Care Eligibility Benefit Response
  • 276-A1 — Health Care Claim Status Request
  • 277-A1 — Health Care Information Status Notification
  • 277-B3 — Health Care Claim Acknowledgement
  • 278-A1 — Health Care Services Review – Request for Review
  • 278-A3 — Health Care Services Review – Response
  • 820-A1 — Payroll Deducted and Other Group Premium Payment for Insurance Products
  • 834-A1 — Benefit Enrollment and Maintenance
  • 835-W1 — Health Care Claim Payment/Advice
  • 837-Q1 — Health Care Claim – Professional
  • 837-Q2 — Health Care Claim – Dental
  • 837-Q3 — Health Care Claim – Institutional
  • 999-A1 — Implementation Acknowledgement for Health Care Insurance

You can also use the example mapping to generate code and compile it to experiment with interfacing a data mapping application to your existing health care records infrastructure.   MapForce code generation menu HIPAA data mapping is only one application for the any-to-any graphical data mapping, conversion, and integration functionality of Altova MapForce. If you are interested in trying MapForce for your next data conversion project, you can click here to download a fully functional 30-day trial.

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Processing the Groupon API – Part 3

David McGahey
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Concluding the series in this post, we will apply a stylesheet to transform the XML data created from our mapping of the Groupon API into HTML. Here is an example of the XML output from the data mapping we created last time: XML produced by MapForce from the Groupon API

Assign a Stylesheet to Transform XML The Component Settings dialog for the output component of the MapForce mapping allows us to assign a stylesheet created with Altova StyleVision.

Assigning a StyleVision Stylesheet to a MapForce component
Assigning a stylesheet to the data mapping output component integrates the operations of MapForce and StyleVision, and a new series of buttons appears at the bottom of the MapForce mapping window for HTML, RTF, PDF, and Microsoft Word formats. (You must have both MapForce and StyleVision installed on your computer.) MapForce ouput formats available through a stylesheet When you click any of these output format buttons, MapForce executes the data mapping exactly as we saw in the previous post. MapForce seamlessly passes the XML output to StyleVision, where it is transformed to the selected format. MapForce then displays the formatted document in the Output window. Here is the MapForce Output window for HTML, based on the StyleVision Power Stylesheet assigned above: HTML output produced by MapForce from the Groupon API The MapForce Output menu lets you save the XML data mapping output or the HTML document formatted according to the stylesheet. How to Make a Stylesheet We designed a stylesheet for the Groupon API data mapping using Altova StyleVision, based on the XML Schema for the MapForce output component. The intuitive StyleVision interface and powerful data access and manipulation features make it easy to create attractive documents in HTML, RTF, PDF, and Microsoft Word formats from XML files. The screenshot below shows the StyleVision Design View of the Extreme Groupon stylesheet. The blue numbered circles identify the location of each design feature listed following the image. StyleVision stylesheet for the MapForce Groupon API mapping Features of the SPS file

  1. User-defined html specifies the viewport meta tag for mobile devices. This lets us design one stylesheet to generate a single HTML file for computers and mobile devices
  2. Document title with customized font, size, and color
  3. An autocalc element uses the XPath count function to count the number of deals in the XML input document and inserts the total
  4. The date timestamp is placed at the top of the document even though the date element occurs at the end of the XML input data file
  5. Images from the Altova and Groupon Web sites are referenced by hyperlinks, not as inline image data
  6. Horizontal rules set off each individual deal. For HTML documents, the rules automatically fit the browser window width
  7. Customized fonts and sizes assigned to different elements
  8. A two-column table organizes each deal description
  9. URLs in the XML file are dynamically assigned as hyperlinks for embedded images, fixed text, and dynamic data

StyleVision Power Stylesheets can combine multiple .xsd files, existing .css stylesheets, database schemas, XBRL taxonomies, and more to produce richly formatted reports that can even include automatically generated charts in various styles. You can also use StyleVision to define e-forms with data entry fields, drop down menus, radio buttons and other advanced features. Previewing Stylesheet Transformations StyleVision lets you assign a working XML file to preview your output as you design the stylesheet, and the buttons along the bottom of the Design window make it convenient to display the formatted working file as you refine your design. We saved the XML output of the MapForce mapping and assigned it as our working document. When the stylesheet was complete, the HTML Preview in StyleVision was identical to the MapForce HTML Output window shown above. To view the document on a mobile device you can either deploy the HTML as a page on a Web site or email it as an attachment. HTML version of the MapForce mapped data on a mobile device In addition to the stylesheet itself and formatted versions of the working document, StyleVision lets you save generated XSLT files to transform other XML files using your stylesheet design outside the StyleVision application. Automation Next Time In the future when you want to re-run a data mapping and refresh the HTML document with up to date data, there are two ways to automate the process:

  • You can run MapForce from a command line with parameters to name the mapping definition file and even call StyleVision to create formatted output
  • You can generate royalty-free code for the mapping in XSLT, Java, C++, or C# to combine with the XSLT code from StyleVision to build your own end-to-end application

XMLSpy, MapForce, and StyleVision are all available together in the specially priced Altova MissionKit. See for yourself how easy it is to use the MissionKit to convert data from a Web API — download a free 30-day trial!
Editor’s Note: Our original series on mapping data from the Groupon API ran in three parts you can see by clicking the links here: Part 1 of Processing the Groupon API with Altova MapForce describes how to create dynamic input by collecting data from multiple URLs. Processing the Groupon API with MapForce – Part 2 describes how we filtered data from the API and defined the output to extract only the most interesting details. Processing the Groupon API – Part 3 describes formatting the output as a single HTML document optimized for desktop and mobile devices, and reviews ways to automate repeat execution.

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