Stream: questionnaire
Topic: Comparators in quantities
Ivan Dubrov (Dec 29 2020 at 06:16):
How common comparators are needed for quantity values in forms?
We want to simplify questionnaire-based forms and are considering skipping comparators (not allowing to enter comparator) for quantities where they are not needed.
Do you think it should be "opt-in" ("allow entering comparator for this quantity question") or "opt-out" ("don't allow comparator for this questionnaire item"). Which scenario is more common in general?
Also, what would be the standard way to indicate that given questionnaire item does not need a comparator / does need a comparator? So far we've only thought about using https://www.hl7.org/fhir/extension-questionnaire-fhirtype.html or https://www.hl7.org/fhir/extension-questionnaire-basetype.html (by setting either of them to "SimpleQuantity"). It sort of suggests "opt-in" behavior by default (quantity will have comparator input unless this extension is used to "opt-out").
Other suggestions?
Lloyd McKenzie (Dec 29 2020 at 16:44):
Most questionnaires won't allow the use of Quantity at all. Instead, they'll capture a decimal (and the units will be fixed) or they'll capture value and units as separate questions.
Ivan Dubrov (Dec 29 2020 at 20:44):
How common it would be to allow choosing the unit to address different measurement systems (like "lb" vs "kg")? Or is "lb" vs "kg" really just the only example where this would make sense?
Brian Kaney (Dec 31 2020 at 01:23):
@Ivan Dubrov it is not only for different measurement systems, e.g. mmol/l or mg/dl. We use quantity often in our questionnaires, and I like your idea of SimpleQuantity when comparator isn't necessary.
Ivan Dubrov (Dec 31 2020 at 01:43):
What I don't like about it is that it kind of uses "standard" extensions, but is not quite standard in the sense that it is pretty much arbitrary interpretation of baseType / fhirType extensions semantics. Maybe, it should be another https://www.hl7.org/fhir/valueset-questionnaire-item-control.html value instead.
Brian Kaney (Dec 31 2020 at 14:05):
We have been trying not to conflate item-control (UI specification) with the semantics of the underlining data type. For instance -- we have an item-control DropDown that handles both picking from an inline set of answers or valueset (for an item type choice / code); as well as it handles picking from a FHIR query (for an item type of a reference).
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
