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The Mission
The core mission of the Chiapas Project is to provide healthcare agencies a powerful tool to enable HIPAA transactions with their trading partners.
The Challenge
I believe that the original intention of the HIPAA transaction sets was to promote a universal data protocol that would be the
end solution used by all healthcare trading partners, and obsolete all previous communication protocols. In reality though, what
I witnessed happening is that the HIPAA protocol is so difficult to implement, that all but the largest and most able institutions
turn to clearinghouses.
There are multiple topics to consider why this is difficult. First is the HIPAA protocol itself. Many in the healthcare are used
to straightforward fixed-length text file formats where all data is located in very discrete locations. The HIPAA transaction sets
transmit information according to a complex set of rules where information is embedded within multiple layers of loop structures.
Once the complexities of the protocol are understood, then this is only the beginning. The trading partner needs to be worked with
to set up the exact expectations of what data they are sending or expecting to be sent. Then, business data needs to be
mapped to the HIPAA protocol, and these processes need to be tested and brought into production.
Free, Open Software
These problems can only be solved by a great deal of patience, study and work. However, these problems seem less daunting once
you have the advantage of a stable translation package. The focus and aim of Chiapas is to bring this package to healthcare
professionals, free of charge or hindrance.
Chiapas, as it stands from version 1.0, is a complete middleware HIPAA translation system. It provides a binary representation
of all major HIPAA transactions that allow it to decode and encode files from the moment it is installed. A graphical user
interface provides a front-end to the complex business of mapping HIPAA fields to business data fields, and then testing these
mappings. Once the development is completed and processes are worked out to begin production, Chiapas provides a scripting language
to act as an automated "clearinghouse" that can run on either Windows or Linux (with the Mono package) servers. Furthermore, there
is a collection of documentation (including a 75 page core user manual) that help users use Chiapas.
Help Wanted!
Despite all of the work that has gone into Chiapas, there are still aspects of it's functionality that can use work. chiapasStudio is
still in 'beta' and could definitely use some work. The tree file that forms the definition of the HIPAA Implementation
Guides does not contain Addenda information. If you would be willing to contribute work to advance this open source project,
please contact the site administrator.
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