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Mirth Connect by NextGen Healthcare

  1. Useful Links
  2. General Information
  3. Installation and Upgrade
  4. Starting NextGen Connect
  5. Running NextGen Connect in Java 9 or greater
  6. Java Licensing
  7. License

1. Useful Links

2. General Information

The NextGen Solutions Mission

NextGen Solutions help many of the nation's largest, most respected healthcare entities streamline their care-management processes to satisfy the demands of a regulatory, competitive healthcare industry. With Mirth Solutions, NextGen Healthcare's goal is to provide the healthcare community with a secure, efficient, cost-effective means of sharing health information. The natural product of this aim is a family of applications — which includes NextGen Connect — flexible enough to manage patient information, from small practices to large HIEs, so our clients and users can work confidently and effectively within the healthcare-delivery system.

About NextGen Connect

Like an interpreter who translates foreign languages into the one you understand, NextGen Connect translates message standards into the one your system understands. Whenever a "foreign" system sends you a message, NextGen Connect's integration capabilities expedite the following:

  • Filtering — NextGen Connect reads message parameters and passes the message to or stops it on its way to the transformation stage.
  • Transformation — NextGen Connect converts the incoming message standard to another standard (e.g., HL7 to XML).
  • Extraction — NextGen Connect can "pull" data from and "push" data to a database.
  • Routing — NextGen Connect makes sure messages arrive at their assigned destinations.

Users manage and develop channels (message pathways) using the interface known as the Administrator: Administrator screenshot

3. Installation and Upgrade

NextGen Connect installers are available for individual operating systems (.exe for Windows, .rpm and .sh for Linux, and .dmg for Mac OS X). Pre-packaged distributions are also available for individual operating systems (ZIP for Windows, tar.gz for Linux, and tar.gz for Mac OS X). The installer allows you to automatically upgrade previous NextGen Connect installations (starting with version 1.5).

NextGen Connect installers also come with the option to install and start a service that will run in the background. You also have the option of installing and running the NextGen Connect Server Manager, which allows you to start and stop the service on some operating systems, change NextGen Connect properties and backend database settings, and view the server logs.

An optional NextGen Connect Command Line Interface can be installed, allowing you to connect to a running NextGen Connect Server using a command line. This tool is useful for performing or scripting server tasks without opening the NextGen Connect Administrator.

The NextGen Connect Administrator Launcher can also be installed, allowing you to manage connections to multiple NextGen Connect servers and configure options such as Java runtime, max heap size, and security protocols.

After the installation, the NextGen Connect directory layout will look as follows:

  • /appdata/mirthdb: The embedded database (Do NOT delete if you specify Derby as your database). This will be created when the NextGen Connect Server is started. The path for appdata is defined by the dir.appdata property in mirth.properties.
  • /cli-lib: Libraries for the NextGen Connect Command Line Interface (if installed)
  • /client-lib: Libraries for the NextGen Connect Administrator
  • /conf: Configuration files
  • /custom-lib: Place your custom user libraries here to be used by the default library resource.
  • /docs: This document and a copy of the NextGen Connect license
  • /docs/javadocs: Generated javadocs for the installed version of NextGen Connect. These documents are also available when the server is running at http://[server address]:8080/javadocs/ (i.e. http://localhost:8080/javadocs/).
  • /extensions: Libraries and meta data for Plug-ins and Connectors
  • /logs: Default location for logs generated by NextGen Connect and its sub-components
  • /manager-lib: Libraries for the NextGen Connect Server Manager (if installed)
  • /public_html: Directory exposed by the embedded web server
  • /server-launcher-lib: Libraries in this directory will be loaded into the main NextGen Connect Server thread context classloader upon startup. This is required if you are using any custom log4j appender libraries.
  • /server-lib: NextGen Connect server libraries
  • /webapps: Directory exposed by the embedded web server to host webapps

4. Starting NextGen Connect

Once NextGen Connect has been installed, there are several ways to connect to launch the NextGen Connect Administrator. On a Windows installation, there is a NextGen Connect Administrator item in the Start Menu which launches the application directly.

If the option is not available, you can connect to the NextGen Connect Administrator launch page which by default should be available at http://[server address]:8080 (i.e. http://localhost:8080). It is recommended to use the Administrator Launcher to start the Administrator, which can be downloaded by clicking on the Download Administrator Launcher button. Clicking the Launch NextGen Connect Administrator button will download the Java Web Start file for your server. Opening the file with the Administrator Launcher connects you to the server, which will be listening on https://[server address]:8443 (i.e. https://localhost:8443).

If running a new installation, the default username and password for the login screen is admin and admin. This should be changed immediately for security purposes.

If you are launching the administrator for the first time, you will notice that the libraries for the NextGen Connect Administrator will be loaded. This feature allows you run the Administrator from any remote NextGen Connect server without having to download and install a separate client.

You may also notice a security warning when starting the administrator (dialog box depends on browser being used). This is because by default NextGen Connect creates a self-signed certificate for its web server. For now click Run to continue launching the administrator, but check out the User Guide for instructions on how to replace the certificate.

5. Running NextGen Connect in Java 9 or greater

In order to run NextGen Connect in Java 9 or greater, copy the options from docs/mcservice-java9+.vmoptions and append them to either mcserver.vmoptions or mcservice.vmoptions, depending on your deployment. Then restart NextGen Connect.

To run the NextGen Connect Command Line Interface, create a new file named mccommand.vmoptions in the NextGen Connect root directory. Copy all of the options from docs/mcservice-java9+.vmoptions into mccommand.vmoptions and save before launching the Command Line Interface.

6. Java Licensing

In 2019, Oracle significantly changed licensing for official Oracle Java releases. You must now purchase a license in order to receive updates to the commercial version of Oracle Java. In response to this change, we officially added support for OpenJDK in NextGen Connect. OpenJDK receives free updates from Oracle for a period of 6 months following each release. While the Oracle OpenJDK distribution is recommended for use with Connect, we strive to support third-party OpenJDK distributions as well such as AdoptOpenJDK, Azul Zulu and Amazon Corretto. Third party distributions may receive extended release updates from their respective communities, but these are not guaranteed.

7. License

NextGen Connect is released under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0. You can find a copy of the license in server/docs/LICENSE.txt.

All licensing information regarding third-party libraries is located in the server/docs/thirdparty folder.