HL7 v2 lab interface

Status

Available

Region

Global

Data flow

Orders: wawa → lab. Results: lab → wawa

Connectivity

HTTPS for orders; results polled from your endpoint or bucket, or deposited in storage wawa provides

Set up by

wawa, with the laboratory and the clinic

wawa sends electronic lab orders and receives results using HL7 v2. Laboratories that already expose an HL7 interface can usually connect without custom development on their side.

	Orders (wawa → lab)	Results (lab → wawa)
Message	ORM^O01, HL7 v2.3	ORU^R01, HL7 v2.3
Transport	HTTPS POST to your order endpoint	A REST endpoint or SFTP server wawa polls, or files you deposit in storage wawa provides

Interface specifications

The Outbound Orders and Inbound Results interface specifications, with message structure, field usage, matching and acknowledgement behaviour, are shared with laboratory partners under NDA. Contact us to request them.

What we need from you

Access

• An HTTPS order-intake endpoint (public CA certificate, or send us your internal root CA) and a health-check GET (same auth, creates nothing, any 2xx means healthy).
• How results reach us: an endpoint or SFTP server we poll (with credentials), or agreement to deposit files in storage we provide.
• Credentials for each direction (API key, OAuth client, SFTP account or client certificate), exchanged over a secure channel.
• If your firewall filters by source, allowlist wawa's egress IPs.
• A test or sandbox environment, if you have one, and how it differs from production.

Data

• Your sending application and facility identifiers, and the processing IDs you use for test and production.
• Your full test and panel code list, and analyte codes. Codes must be stable; we map order codes per clinic.
• Which result statuses you send (preliminary, corrected, cancelled).
• Your microbiology conventions (organisms and sensitivities), if applicable.
• Confirmation you will return wawa's order reference on results.
• Which patient identifier your system stores.
• The time zone behind every timestamp you send.
• A file-naming convention, if file-based: unique, never reused, ASCII, no patient data in names.
• De-identified sample messages covering normal results, corrections, cancellations, microbiology, embedded PDFs and abnormal flags.

People and process

• A named technical contact at the laboratory, and the clinic lead.
• Your certification or conformance process, if you run one, and its lead time.
• Clinic staff time for testing with de-identified patients before go-live.

How results reach wawa

Option	How it works	What we need
Deposit in wawa storage	You write .hl7 (and optional .pdf) files to a folder in storage wawa provides. wawa collects them every 5 minutes and moves them to a processed folder.	Nothing to host. We give you a write-only key scoped to your folder.
wawa polls your bucket	You drop files in your own AWS S3 bucket; wawa collects them every 5 minutes.	Bucket name, region and prefix, and an access key allowed to list, read, copy and delete there.
wawa polls your endpoint	wawa retrieves results from your REST API or SFTP server.	Endpoint or SFTP details and credentials.

Orders are posted to your HTTPS endpoint with an API key header, or, for laboratories without an order API, sent as a signed PDF request form by email.

Setting it up

The clinic adds the laboratory under Settings → Lab Work → Laboratories: laboratory name, phone number, email address and delivery method, and the lab's tests (test name, code and billing product). wawa configures the connection itself (transport, credentials and code mappings) with you.