Cloverleaf system

The system's main purpose is to facilitate the exchange of information among the various applications within your organization. The system enables these applications to communicate with each other, even though they use different information formats and different communications protocols.

The system acts as a hub for exchanging messages, which are the records created by one or more remote systems. In a typical exchange, messages are created in one format in a remote system and sent through the system. This reformats the messages and transmits them through a different protocol to another remote system.

For example, when a patient is admitted to a hospital, an admission record is created in HL7 format. This is sent to the system through an LU 6.2 connection. Information from that same record might later be required in the hospital lab. This lab uses an FRL format and the Fileset FTP protocol. To enable the lab to use the contents of the record, a bridge is provided in the system between the two protocols. This translates between one record format and the other.

The system engine completes several functions. It receives inbound messages and acknowledges receipt. These are ACKs and NAKs. It then extracts the message contents from inbound protocol envelopes, and routes messages to and from the translation system.

The engine also inserts the contents of the translated messages into outbound protocol envelopes and transmits outbound messages to their destinations. The engine maintains message copies in a recovery database until message receipt is acknowledged by the destination applications. It also maintains an error database of messages that have some form of error, and a log of every system event.