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Format Converter Bench

One patient record, five formats, side by side — CSV, JSON, XML, HL7 v2 and FHIR — with the same field lit up in all of them at once. See what each format keeps, what it loses, and why healthcare ended up with all five. Then paste your own data and convert it. Synthetic data only.

The same glucose result written as CSV, JSON, XML, HL7 v2 and FHIR, all on screen together. Pick a piece of information — the hospital number, the unit, which test it was — and watch it light up in all five at once. The panes that stay dark are the point: that format cannot carry it.

One record, five formats

Karen Whitfield’s glucose result, written five ways. All five panes below say the same thing — a hospital in the real world will hand you every one of them.

Pick a piece of information and watch it light up in all five at once. Where a pane stays dark, that format simply cannot carry it.

CSV

A spreadsheet row. Flat, tiny, and unable to nest.

mrn,family_name,given_name,birth_date,sex,glucose,unit,collected_at
MRN-4471882,Whitfield,Karen,1962-11-03,female,6.7,mmol/L,2026-07-19T08:15:00+05:30

JSON

Labelled and nested. What most modern APIs speak.

{
  "patient": {
    "mrn": "MRN-4471882",
    "familyName": "Whitfield",
    "givenName": "Karen",
    "birthDate": "1962-11-03",
    "sex": "female"
  },
  "result": {
    "test": "Glucose",
    "value": 6.7,
    "unit": "mmol/L",
    "collectedAt": "2026-07-19T08:15:00+05:30"
  }
}

XML

The same tree in tags. A schema can police it.

<labResult>
  <patient mrn="MRN-4471882">
    <familyName>Whitfield</familyName>
    <givenName>Karen</givenName>
    <birthDate>1962-11-03</birthDate>
    <sex>female</sex>
  </patient>
  <result test="Glucose" value="6.7" unit="mmol/L">
    <collectedAt>2026-07-19T08:15:00+05:30</collectedAt>
  </result>
</labResult>

HL7 v2

Pipes and positions. Still the workhorse inside hospitals.

MSH|^~\&|LAB|CITYGEN|EHR|CITYGEN|20260719081500+0530||ORU^R01|MSG00021|P|2.5.1
PID|1||MRN-4471882^^^CITYGEN^MR||Whitfield^Karen||19621103|F
OBR|1||LAB-88213|2345-7^Glucose [Moles/volume] in Serum or Plasma^LN
OBX|1|NM|2345-7^Glucose [Moles/volume] in Serum or Plasma^LN||6.7|mmol/L|3.9-5.5|H|||F

FHIR (JSON)

JSON with an agreed vocabulary — the modern standard.

{
  "resourceType": "Observation",
  "status": "final",
  "code": {
    "coding": [{
      "system": "http://loinc.org",
      "code": "2345-7",
      "display": "Glucose [Moles/volume] in Serum or Plasma"
    }]
  },
  "subject": { "reference": "Patient/4471882" },
  "effectiveDateTime": "2026-07-19T08:15:00+05:30",
  "valueQuantity": {
    "value": 6.7,
    "unit": "mmol/L",
    "system": "http://unitsofmeasure.org",
    "code": "mmol/L"
  },
  "interpretation": [{
    "coding": [{
      "system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v3-ObservationInterpretation",
      "code": "H",
      "display": "High"
    }]
  }]
}

Ask Vaidya

Grounded in this lab's Kosha theory — answers cite their sources.

Educational only — not medical advice. Vaidya answers from Kosha, with citations.