FHIR Chat · Questionnaires and Terminology Serviceslogy

Stream: questionnaire

Topic: Questionnaires and Terminology Serviceslogy

Paul Lynch (Aug 28 2018 at 20:25):

Suppose a questionnaire wants to use a ValueSet that is only available on terminology service A, and also some other ValueSets that are only available on terminology service B. Is there a way for the Questionnaire to specify which terminology service should be used to handle the expansions of the ValueSet URL in a given question's "options" attribute?

Lloyd McKenzie (Aug 28 2018 at 20:36):

Not really. If you retrieve the value set, it might hint what terminology services support it - but in the end, it's up to the implementer to figure out what service (or services) it wants to use.

Paul Lynch (Aug 28 2018 at 22:36):

So then if you receive a Questionnaire from someone and what to use it, you might or might not be able to guess which terminology server to use in order to retrieve its ValueSets. I am surprised this has not come up before. It happened to me just last week, that I got a Questionnaire for which some of the ValueSets I have no idea to how to get. Even for the HL7 ValueSets I was not sure where to go, but I found a source in HAPI FHIR. For the other lists that are not hl7.org I have no idea where to look. I suppose I, as a human, could contact the person who sent me the Questionnaire (which I did), but a program that renders Questionnaires should not have to guess. I think an extension is needed on item.options (or since I see that is a Reference, perhaps on item).

Lloyd McKenzie (Aug 28 2018 at 23:01):

Feel free to submit a change request and we can talk about how best to address it

Brian Postlethwaite (Aug 29 2018 at 02:34):

When I think about them, if I'm sharing the Questionniare, the Terminology also has to come along with it.
My implementation looks to the same source.

Brian Postlethwaite (Aug 29 2018 at 02:34):

So if I clone a questionnaire, I also need to clone the terminology too

Brian Postlethwaite (Aug 29 2018 at 02:35):

(before that I also just used relative references to the terminology, which made it quite explicit, but I think that's all gone to Canonical Uris now.

Paul Lynch (Aug 29 2018 at 14:55):

The source from which you clone a Questionnaire might not itself have the terminology locally, but be relying on some (hidden) knowledge of which terminology servers to use. I am not sure if that would actually happen in real systems, but it seems possible.

I will submit a change request as Lloyd suggested.