"Separator characters in HL7 are also known as message delimiters or special encoding characters," said Brull. "The separator characters are defined at the beginning of the HL7 message in the MSH segment." An example MSH segment with the HL7-recommended separator characters would begin: MSH|^~&, with the separator characters defined as:

| (FIELD separator, aka pipe)

^ (component separator, aka hat)

& (sub-component separator)

 ~ (field repeat separator)

(ESCAPE character)

"While the above separator characters are recommended, the separator character for segments, (ASCII 13 or HEX 0D), is not negotiable," added Brull.

"Separator characters in HL7 are also known as message delimiters or special encoding characters," said Brull. "The separator characters are defined at the beginning of the HL7 message in the MSH segment." An example MSH segment with the HL7-recommended separator characters would begin: MSH|^~&, with the separator characters defined as:

| (field separator, aka pipe)

^ (component separator, aka hat)

& (sub-component separator)

 ~ (field repeat separator)

(escape character)

"While the above separator characters are recommended, the separator character for segments, (ASCII 13 or HEX 0D), is not negotiable," added Brull.