Customer Reviews

Designing Healthcare Solutions with Microsoft Biztalk Server 2004 (VertiGuide)

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The first and foremost thing which causes frustration is that a book as big as 700 pages (BizTalk Unleashed) and covers a lot of topics is same as 200 page book (this) with even fewer details when we compare the price. If we were to assume that BizTalk Unleashed is worth (I know for sure this book is not worth what I paid) for what it is then this book is not even worth a couple of dollars.

First let me start with the contents of the book. This book explains fundamental challenges of Health care industry. Nothing new in here. Anyone with common sense/knowledge can see the problems. Next it explains Biztalk 2004 in as few words as possible. Then comes HL7 followed by HIPAA. These two topics are the primary reason why I bought this book and this section is covered in no more than 70 pages with a huge font, few lines and a lot of pictures. IMHO just a few key strokes in Google can get you all the information present in this section (Contact me if you are unsuccessful, I can help you with it if you want to). Also, there are a couple of EDI examples on Scott's blog. I thought for a while and came to a conclusion that I (technical background) might not be the intended reader for this book. Then who could be it? Managers? How can they become managers if they don't have the slightest knowledge of HL7 and HIPAA. So, I don't have a clue as of now the intended readers for this book. May be this is intended as a marketing tool for Biztalk 2004 and accelerators (HL7 & HIPAA)

Conclusion: Basics of BizTalk 2004, HL7 and HIPAA are covered. IMHO anyone without these basics should not work on integration project. I am completely disappointed with the content of this book. I don't recommend this book to anyone. Initially I thought of writing this review tomorrow. But, I woke up from my bed (11:45 PM) to write this review so that no one makes the same mistake as I did after seeing this review.

The 250 pages of the book dedicate very little to healthcare solutions in integration problems using BizTalk 2004. Only chapter 8 and 9 are used for this to cover HL7 and HIPAA respectively. And that goes no further (even less) than what can be read from the BizTalk Accelerator products online help.
In the earlier chapters the authors outline the challenges of integration on a superficial level. If you know about it, it is useless, if you don't you won't get much wiser. The same is true for BizTalk itself. It touches a few things but never enough to get you started if you didn't know how to do it already in the first place. For novices you need the BizTalk tutorials or get Scott Woodgate's "BizTalk 2004 Unleased" to understand the BTS2004 architecture and artifacts and how to use them.

The book should have covered practical use of the BizTalk Accelerators and how to make the most of them or circumvent some of their limitations by customizing them. For example, how to modify HL7 schemas to your specification given the rather odd way the Accelerator builds up these schemas from three other parts. It should tell you how to cope with the ways some hospital (mis)use HL7 messages - like adding their own Z-segments, adding more separators than there are fields, how to route on only MSH header fields, ignoring whatever the message body contains (I know - some hospitals work like that!). How to make the very American HL7 messages fit local (german, dutch, french...) versions. How to have application acknowledgement between sender to receiver (works only after a BTAHL7 hotfix). How to use custom pipelines for specific HL7 situations rather than stating it can be done.

It does none of this. It tells in fact nothing new. If you know BizTalk, you can read the accelerator help file and do the tutorials that come with it and you know more than the book will tell you. If you know nothing then this book will not help either. It doesn't even manage to make a proper explanation of a port and its location/pipeline/map components.

The two blurb recommendations of two Microsoft managers on the backcover can only be interpreted as marketing blurb. I doubt they read the book.

Also the book is badly published. Pictures have been copied from the online help or presentations which are in colour. The book is in black and white, resulting in some diagram blocks that are black with black captions. How am I to read that?

There should be a money back policy on this book as this is a total waste of money.

This book has an interresting positioning philosophy. It is too technical for the president or board of directors. It is too simplified for the systems analyst who will be implementing a system. For someone inbetween these positions, this is an excellent book.

If you go try to learn about BizTalk at the Microsoft web site it sends you to page after page, written at the two extremes given above. At the teckie level you can download the package and go into it as deeply as you wish. At the high level the discussion is so high that it is almost meaningless, an example: "In today's global economy, companies need to integrate applications, systems, and technologies from a variety of sources." OK, so what?

In this book the authors have presented the BizTalk system with the two specialized packages (Accelerators, whatever those are) that are aimed at the health care marketplace. There's a fairly clear description of what we are trying to do with this software, a bunch of diagrams showing what data goes where, and discussion of what you can do, with a minimal amount of how to do it.

This is a small enough book that you can read it fairly quickly and come away with a fair understanding of the Microsoft philosophy of meeting the HIPAA and HL7 standards.

This book was awesome. It was a perfect intro to Biztalk in the Healthcare space. It dealt with common HC industry problems well, and offered clear and useful solutions using Biztalk.

Thank you, Jim Casey, for making my life easier.