Stream: implementers
Topic: identifier
Ruth berge (Mar 22 2022 at 14:44):
Hi, I asked on Jan 14 this question in the Da Vinci ATR and the response leads me to asking this question as a whole. Should an identifier for any resource be unique within that resource for a FHIR repository? I am not asking about the resource id. I am asking about the type of identifier (2.24.0.12)which is described as "The value SHALL be unique within the defined system..." I have understood this to mean that any identifier for a resource- for Patient: a medical record number, a drivers license as examples- must be a unique identifier that matches (with the system and possibly period or other ameliorating properties) to one and only one resource. Is this true?
Lloyd McKenzie (Mar 22 2022 at 14:54):
Short answer is "it depends". Something like an order number should be unique. On the other hand, something like medical license number might not be - because there might be multiple PractitionerRole instances that correspond to the same individual (with different roles and/or time-periods).
Elliot Silver (Mar 22 2022 at 15:06):
In the II workgroup, we couldn't identify a restriction that identifiers be unique, and actually added a comment to point that out to people who might be more used to DICOM where a particular study UID will only occur once in an archive, and warn them that they may get multiple ImagingStudy resources with the same identifier.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
