We built the interface engine we wished we had
MessageFoundry started as a reaction — to interface-engine price hikes, to contracts that are easier to sign than to leave, and to a market where the tools hospitals depend on keep getting more expensive just as budgets get tighter. We thought healthcare deserved an open, modern alternative. So we built one — and made it free.
The engines hospitals rely on keep getting pricier — and harder to leave
Over the past decade, the leading HL7 interface engines have been consolidated under private-equity firms and large, privately held conglomerates. That isn't a conspiracy; it's just how the market has moved. But it has consequences for the organizations that depend on them.
Healthcare organizations are absorbing reimbursement cuts and tightening budgets. Over the same stretch, many have watched their integration costs climb — through higher list prices, per-interface and per-connection fees, and renewals that only ever seem to move in one direction.
And leaving is rarely easy. Interface logic is often locked inside a proprietary, GUI-bound format that doesn't port cleanly, and multi-year agreements raise the cost of walking away. Intentional or not, the result is leverage — and it sits with the vendor, not the health system.
We kept running into the same wall. Eventually, being annoyed about it stopped being enough.
Affordable, flexible, and yours to leave
The fix isn't a cheaper version of the same trap. It's a different kind of tool — one built so you stay in control of your costs, your data, and your way out.
- Open source and self-hosted — no per-interface licensing, so your costs don't climb every time you add a feed, and nothing is locked inside a vendor's runtime.
- Easy to move off legacy — AI-assisted migration drafts MessageFoundry equivalents of your existing channels, so switching is measured in weeks, not multi-year projects.
- Approachable for your whole team — set interfaces up with guided wizards, or work in plain Python, one of the world's most widely used languages — so it's easy for analysts and developers alike, and for the team you already have.
- AI assistance on your terms — use modern AI coding help if you want it, skip it if you don't; either way it's code-only and PHI-safe by default.
We gave it away to make healthcare a little better
We could have built another proprietary engine and run the same playbook. We didn't. MessageFoundry is built by MEFOR-ORG, a non-profit, and released under the open-source AGPL — source available, free to run in your own environment, with no investors expecting a return.
The reasoning is simple, and human. Every dollar a health system doesn't hand to an integration vendor is a dollar it can spend where it counts. Money saved in IT means fewer layoffs on the teams that keep care running — and, further down the line, more of the budget pointed where it belongs: at the bedside.
One tool won't fix a health system's budget, and we won't pretend otherwise. But the direction is right — so we're pushing it the right way.
The practical bits
Where it stands
Early Access connects MLLP, TCP, X12/EDI, HTTP/REST, SOAP, FHIR REST, databases, and files (local and SFTP/FTP/FTPS); deeply parses HL7 v2 and routes JSON, XML, and X12/EDI; and delivers durably — with active-passive high availability, RBAC, a tamper-evident audit log, and encryption at rest, on SQLite, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server. Inbound REST/SOAP/FHIR listeners and SMART on FHIR are on the roadmap.
License
Released under the GNU AGPL-3.0-or-later, with the source available. Running a modified version as a network service triggers the AGPL's §13 source-offer obligation. A separately-licensed, low-cost commercial edition is available from MEFOR-ORG, a non-profit.
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. A signed Contributor License Agreement is required before a pull request can be merged — the best place to start is a GitHub issue describing what you'd like to change.
Take a look — or just ask
See how it works, or send us a question about deployment, security, migration, or licensing — we'll get back to you by email.