HL7 used in healthcare is similar. Just grabbing the first few segments from the example message in the wiki article: MSH|^~\&|MegaReg|XYZHospC|SuperOE|XYZI

HL7 used in healthcare is similar. Just grabbing the first few segments from the example message in the wiki article: MSH|^~\&|MegaReg|XYZHospC|SuperOE|XYZImgCtr|20060529090131-0500||ADT^A01^ADT_A01|01052901|P|2.5 EVN||200605290901||||200605290900 PID|||56782445^^^UAReg^PI||KLEINSAMPLE^BARRY^Q^JR||19620910|M||2028-9^^HL70005^RA99113^^XYZ|260 GOODWIN CREST DRIVE^^BIRMINGHAM^AL^35209^^M~NICKELL’S PICKLES^10000 W 100TH AVE^BIRMINGHAM^AL^35200^^O The delimiters are defined at the beginning of the opening MSH (message header) segment. HL7 is zero-indexed, but your zero index is always the segment label, so it's easy for non-technical people to count naturally to get the field identifier without having to explain counting n-1 to them. The one exception to that is the MSH segment. Things get a little screwier there because the first instance of the field delimiter is also counted as a full field in the spec, so it tends to trip people up. So even though "^~\&" above looks like it should be MSH.1, it's actually MSH.2, etc. The delimiters used in the wiki example are the most common you encounter, but some systems do things differently because reasons. The primary HIS at my hospital uses colons and semicolons, for example (and I want to poke out my eyes with ice picks every time I have to look at the messages coming from it as a result). But since it's all defined right in the message header, it's trivial to convert between delimiters when you need/want to. Either way, this is how the vast majority of electronic medical records are transmitted today.