FHIR Chat · R4 Technical Correction and OIDs · terminology

Stream: terminology

Topic: R4 Technical Correction and OIDs

view this post on Zulip Grahame Grieve (Oct 02 2019 at 21:46):

I just opened the R4 technical correction for review. The R4 technical correction contains a correction for a rather unfortunate oversight (one that I bear personal responsibility for)

The line item for the change says:

Change all code system OIDs to use the root 2.16.840.1.113883.4.642.4. instead of 2.16.840.1.113883.4.642.1. due to reassigning OID leaf values without updating the root in the past

Some more history:

  • We publish OIDs for all our code systems and value sets to enable them to work with OID based infrastructures
  • Initially, we assigned OIDS to bindings, and by extension, to code systems and value sets
  • by R3 we had built out a proper vocab sub-system, and we had some issues with the OIDs that were being assigned since they were being assigned at the wrong level.
  • vocab decided to reinitialise all the OIDs, and use a new root value so that we didn't re-use the OIDs
  • I made this change in March 2017
  • at this time, we changed all the value sets to use the root 2.16.840.1.113883.4.642.3. instead of 2.16.840.1.113883.4.642.2.
  • but for some reason I can't imagine, I failed to change the code system root. And no one else noticed at the time...
  • which means that we published R4 with re-used OIDs for different code systems - see https://chat.fhir.org/#narrow/stream/179166-implementers/topic/OIDs for details
  • FMG decided to fix this as a technical correction in R4 (since we are doing one anyway) - to change the root from .1 to .4 so that there's no re-use.

I am drawing vocab's attention to this change specifically. It's a very simple technical oversight with rather dramatic implications. (I am sorry)

view this post on Zulip Michelle (Moseman) Miller (Feb 18 2020 at 17:59):

@Grahame Grieve I know you fixed this in R4, but it doesn't seem to be fixed in R5. For example:

Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC


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