FHIR Chat · period of infection and sources of infection

Stream: implementers

Topic: period of infection and sources of infection

Katarina (Jun 21 2019 at 08:48):

How can I model period of infection (period of infection with a pathogen) which is different to onset of disease (first symptoms)?
I also want to model sources of infection for example places or contact with food.
I could create an extension or is there a profile for it?
Thank you for any recommendations.

Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 21 2019 at 12:04):

You could handle the first as a distinct condition. E.g. The difference between HIV+ vs. having AIDS. We don't yet have a resource that tracks exposures (or potential exposures)
. @Joginder Madra is public health doing anything in this space?

Joginder Madra (Jun 21 2019 at 14:42):

Hi. I do not believe we have any active work that is dealing with period of infection @Craig Newman ...do you know if there is any upcoming work in this space?

Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 22 2019 at 02:30):

@Joginder Madra @Craig Newman My question was actually about tracking exposures (i.e. potential sources of infection). Period of infection should be expressible with Condition as is.

Katarina (Jun 24 2019 at 08:44):

@Lloyd McKenzie Thank you. I use Condition.onset to model the onset of disease (beginning of disease). How can I then model the period of infection? What do you mean by distinct condition? Use slicing?

Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 24 2019 at 10:49):

You'd have two separate Condition instances. One representing infection, one representing the manifestation of the associated condition. Someone could be infected (and possibly be a 'carrier') without necessarily having the condition. It's possible that treatment approaches would be different too. The 'disease' Condition could point to the 'infection' Condition with the http://build.fhir.org/extension-condition-dueto.html extension.

Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 24 2019 at 10:50):

If you never track infection except as 'part' of the disease Condition, then the infection condition could be a 'contained' resource. However, in general, it makes sense to track them each as full-blown conditions.

Craig Newman (Jun 24 2019 at 12:17):

I'm not aware of any discussion on tracking exposures.

Katarina (Jun 24 2019 at 13:25):

I see, thank you @Lloyd McKenzie and @Craig Newman .

Lloyd McKenzie (Jun 24 2019 at 23:11):

@Katarina That means that in the short term, you may need to look at the Basic resource as a mechanism to capture the notion of Exposure (unless you prefer to do it with extension on an existing resource).