HL7 v2 utility
Paste an HL7 v2 message and inspect its segments, field numbers, components, and basic metadata in a readable browser-based view.
Formatter
This is a practical viewer for development, testing, demos, and troubleshooting. It is not a certified HL7 conformance validator.
Messages stay in your browser.
No message has been formatted yet.
| Segment | Field | Value | Components |
|---|
Formatted HL7 output will appear here.
FAQ
No. It is a practical formatter and viewer.
No. Use synthetic, anonymised, or test data only.
It is designed for common pipe-delimited HL7 v2 messages and reads delimiters from MSH where possible.
Practical guide
The formatter is useful when an HL7 message is technically one line, contains unfamiliar repetitions or components, or needs to be discussed with someone who does not have an integration engine open. It preserves the original message while presenting segment, field, repetition, component, and subcomponent boundaries more clearly.
PID-3[2].1 or PV1-3.4, into the defect or mapping specification.The field separator is the fourth character of MSH and is conventionally |. MSH-2 declares the component, repetition, escape, and subcomponent characters, commonly ^~\&. A message can use different delimiters, so parsing should follow MSH rather than assume the defaults.
MSH is special: MSH-1 is the field separator itself, while the following visible token is MSH-2. This is why manual field counting in MSH is a frequent source of off-by-one mistakes.
Worked example
PID|1||12345^^^HOSPITAL^MR~998877^^^NATIONAL^NI||TEST^ALEXPID-3 contains two repetitions separated by ~. The first identifier has value 12345, assigning authority HOSPITAL, and type MR. The second has value 998877, authority NATIONAL, and type NI. Selecting “the first PID-3 value” without checking the assigning authority or identifier type can map the wrong identifier.
Troubleshooting
The formatter does not validate a message against a conformance profile, local interface specification, code table, or receiving system. Common labels are provided for convenience, while custom Z-segments and vendor-specific fields may remain generic.
A readable structure is the start of troubleshooting, not proof that the message is semantically valid.
Authorship and review
Maintained and technically reviewed by Health Data Tools, drawing on more than 15 years of healthcare integration experience across HL7, FHIR, CDA, APIs, PKI, and clinical integration systems.
Technically reviewed:
Official references
These references support the technical context. Local implementation guides, vendor profiles, and receiving-system rules still take precedence for a specific interface.