Patent ID: 7908293

Claim:
A medical laboratory report communications gateway computer system for communicating medical laboratory reports between a plurality of clients connected to the communications gateway, the communications gateway computer system comprising: a database storing report form data for each of the plurality of clients connected to the communications gateway, the report form data identifying at least one of syntax, schematic, and semantic information describing a report form used by each of the plurality of clients; an incoming message dispatcher configured to: receive medical laboratory reports from the plurality of clients, access the database to determine a report form of each received medical laboratory report using the report form data, and select an inbound translation to perform on each received medical laboratory report based upon the report form of each received medical laboratory report; an inbound message translator configured to: receive a medical laboratory report from the incoming message dispatcher, and use the report form data stored in the database to perform an inbound translation on the medical laboratory report to transform the medical laboratory report to a canonical form; an outgoing message router configured to: receive the medical laboratory report in the canonical form, identify a destination client for the medical laboratory report, and use the report form data in the database to determine an outbound message form based on the destination client, and select an outbound translation to perform on the medical laboratory report in the canonical form; and an outbound message translator configured to: receive the medical laboratory report in the canonical form, and perform the selected outbound translation on the medical laboratory report in the canonical form to transform the medical laboratory report in the canonical form into a form useable by the destination client, and transmit the translated medical laboratory report to the destination client.