Advisory: Incorrect HealthShare Mirror Upgrade Documentation could lead to Data Integrity issues

InterSystems has corrected a defect in the steps needed to upgrade a mirrored HealthShare environment.

This problem exists for:

• All versions of HealthShare Information Exchange, Unified Care Record, Patient Index, Health Insight, or Personal Community that support mirroring prior to version 2019.2.

This does not affect any versions of Health Connect or IRIS for Health.

In previous versions, the HealthShare mirror upgrade procedure was written in a way that minimized system downtime. Specifically, the mirror upgrade instructions allowed customers to continue processing new data until after the backup mirror member was already successfully upgraded and running the new version. Due to changes in the data model between versions, the recommendation now is to stop processing new data immediately upon beginning the upgrade procedure.

If customers were to follow the previously documented mirror upgrade procedure, it could cause an issue where new data comes in using the data model from the previous version, but then gets mirrored to a backup member without going through the proper conversion steps.

For more information, please see the 2019.2 mirror upgrade documentation.

With each upgrade, it is important to review and follow the upgrade instructions included for the version. The new procedure of turning off data feeds at the beginning of the upgrade should be followed for all upgrades, including those to previous versions such as 2019.1 or 2018.1. The documentation for these version has been updated.

Customers upgrading their mirrored environments should NOT reference the documentation available with their current version. Instead, they should reference the HealthShare 2019.2 online documentation for the correct set of instructions, specifically the section titled Upgrading a Unified Care Record Mirror.

There are no code changes related to this Advisory and an Ad hoc is not required.

If you have any questions regarding this advisory, please contact the Worldwide Response Center (WRC).