FHIR Chat · Access business identifiers across bundles · implementers

Stream: implementers

Topic: Access business identifiers across bundles

Catherine Hosage Norman (Oct 21 2020 at 21:55):

PQ/CMC has a requirement to reference resources that are in different bundles. The bundles are also document type. There are no RESTful endpoints. The bundles will be processed as XML files within the structure of eCTD. There will be no way to use the url/#id to search to information within the bundles. Information is required to validate observation data and other use cases. What is the best method to access the business identifiers?

Vassil Peytchev (Oct 21 2020 at 22:20):

What do you mean by "access the business identifiers"? To reference resources via identifiers you use logical references - reference.identifier and reference.type. AFAIK, there is no way to specify a particular bundle.

Rik Smithies (Oct 21 2020 at 22:22):

Reference by identifier instead by id e.g.:
File 1:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DiagnosticReport xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
  <status value="final"/>
  <code>
    <text value="etc."/>
  </code>
  <result>
    <!-- a reference, but it is not a url -->
    <identifier>
      <system value="http://example.fhir.org/Observation"/>
      <value value="obs1234"/>
    </identifier>
  </result>
</DiagnosticReport>

File 2:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Observation xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
    <identifier>
      <system value="http://example.fhir.org/Observation"/>
      <value value="obs1234"/>
    </identifier>
    <!-- rest of it -->
</Observation>

It works between any resources and they can be in bundles or not, it makes no difference.

Catherine Hosage Norman (Oct 22 2020 at 01:25):

There is no REST reference. The data is unlikely to be authored from an REST instance since this will all be in legacy systems. It will not be received or created in a REST server. These file will be parsed and stored in a database. FHIR is only being used as a transport mechanism.

Rik Smithies (Oct 22 2020 at 07:22):

That's fine and that is what the examples above do. FHIR references don't have to be REST references.

Lloyd McKenzie (Oct 22 2020 at 20:53):

Reference.identifier is fine if a RESTful reference isn't possible. Just be aware that you won't be able to do RESTful things with it (search chaining, includes, etc.)

Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC