Stream: implementers
Topic: Address.country
Ardon Toonstra (Jan 04 2021 at 12:30):
The definition of Address.country element has a short description of "Country (e.g. can be ISO 3166 2 or 3 letter code)" and a comment "ISO 3166 3 letter codes can be used in place of a full country name."
For the comment: is it deliberately chosen for only mentioning the ISO 3166 3 letter codes?
Lloyd McKenzie (Jan 04 2021 at 18:26):
@Grahame Grieve
René Spronk (Jan 05 2021 at 07:48):
same guidance AFAIK in v2 and v3..
Arianne van de Wetering (Jan 05 2021 at 15:20):
René Spronk said:
same guidance AFAIK in v2 and v3..
The question is mainly posed due to the difference between short description (2 or 3 letter code) and comment (only 3 letter code).
Some of our implementers interpret the comment quite literally thinking FHIR recommends 3 letter code, whilst in The Netherlands we specify the use of the 2 letter code in the national healthcare information models (zibs).
The comment confuses here.
René Spronk (Jan 05 2021 at 15:49):
Agree the current documentation is currently confusing. In v2/v3 we had guidance for the string (3 char code), but the data type itself (in those standards) also allowed for a code to be separately conveyed (which address.country does not). Just a bit of history .. but in FHIR the guidance could be improved upon ;-)
Lloyd McKenzie (Jan 05 2021 at 15:52):
Care to submit a change request? :)
Ardon Toonstra (Jan 05 2021 at 16:33):
Done: https://jira.hl7.org/projects/FHIR/issues/FHIR-30239
Elliot Silver (Jan 05 2021 at 17:15):
I also ran into this discrepancy when trying to use ISO 3166-2 which is codes for state/provinces. All of those start with the ISO 3166-1-2 two letter country codes, but I has been using the three letter codes for country. This made determining applicable sub-national codes hard, since I couldn't simply filter provinces by the national code.
Grahame Grieve (Jan 05 2021 at 21:02):
The comment does certainly not mean to discourage the use of 2 letter ISO codes, and should not be seen that way
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
