Stream: implementers
Topic: Device type vs kind
Elliot Silver (May 23 2021 at 18:44):
What is the difference between the FHIR Device kind and FHIR Device type vocabularies? As far as I can tell, they are identical.
Lloyd McKenzie (May 23 2021 at 19:26):
@Todd Cooper @John Rhoads @Hans Buitendijk
John Silva (May 23 2021 at 19:31):
Yes, Todd and the Devices on FHIR folks should be able to answer this. I believe it has a tie-in with the ISO/IEEE 11601 MIB device hierarchy. It also has a "heritage" from the IHE PCD-01 profile work.
Todd Cooper (May 25 2021 at 13:56):
@John Silva ... I've added this topic to the HL7 DEV WG agenda for Q2 Wed (tomorrow) ... I think @John Rhoads answered too but we will sync up as a group tomorrow. Stay tuned ...
John Rhoads (May 26 2021 at 14:29):
This is an area of conspicuous unclarity in the specification (and mea culpa, I haven't taken opportunities to speak out about this in Healthcare Products O&O meetings). @Elliot Silver (@Lloyd McKenzie, many thanks for drawing attention to this question!) you are right that Device.type and DeviceDefinition.kind refer to the same set of SNOMED concepts. But note that this is only an example binding. The use cases of Device and DeviceDefinition are quite different. In the HL7 Devices Work Group, the focus is on devices that communicate with other healthcare IT systems and our IGs are built around reporting and managing specific observations and other data coming from and going to point-of-care regulated devices (and also personal health devices). We tend to use the IEEE 11073 Medical Devices Communications 11073-10201 Domain Information Model standard and, especially in the Devices.type field, the 11073-10101 Nomenclature standard, which is, unlike SNOMED CT, pretty exclusively about the nitty-gritty of actual communicating devices. DeviceDefinition.kind encompasses a lot more use cases, particularly in the supply chain realm, including a lot of kinds of devices that don't communicate. This kind of distinction needs to be brought into the FHIR field definitions to give readers some useful help in understanding what is going on!
John Rhoads (May 26 2021 at 14:30):
(deleted)
Elliot Silver (May 26 2021 at 15:09):
John Rhoads said:
... Device.type and DeviceDefinition.kind refer to the same set of SNOMED concepts. But note that this is only an example binding. The use cases of Device and DeviceDefinition are quite different... We tend to use the IEEE 11073 Medical Devices Communications 11073-10201 Domain Information Model standard and, especially in the Devices.type field, the 11073-10101 Nomenclature standard...
I understand that they're only example bindings, but it seems that if the use cases are quite different, then the example binding (as well as the definition) should be different. I'd say this is especially true if you have existing nomenclature that you could point to for your example.
Todd Cooper (May 26 2021 at 17:26):
FWIW - We have this as one of the topics queued up for the start of the HL7 DEV meetings Q2 this Friday (0700 U.S. Eastern start)
@Elliot Silver great if you or others in this topic can participate - we will also have some representatives in the OO session Thursday Q1 ... that I believe includes this topic
Elliot Silver (May 26 2021 at 18:26):
@Todd Cooper , unfortunately I'm not atttending the WGM, so I can't join you. Thanks for looking at it though.
Todd Cooper (May 28 2021 at 13:48):
@Elliot Silver FWIW - This morning on the HL7 DEV Friday Q2 session, we took an action item to open a JIRA issue on this topic and propose updates to these two value set descriptions (at the top of this thread) to provide a clearer and more complete (aligned with our reality!) picture for those trying to noodle down the details ... thanks for bringing this up!
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
