Need to allow for Patient's where there's no indication of human vs. animal

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    • Type: Change Request
    • Resolution: Persuasive with Modification
    • Priority: Medium
    • FHIR Core (FHIR)
    • DSTU1 [deprecated]
    • Patient Administration
    • STU
    • Patient
    • 5.1.2
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      Update the definition of the animal property description from:

      "This element has a value if the patient is an animal."

      to

      "This patient is known to be an animal."

      Update the comments section of the animal property from:

      "The animal element is labeled "Is Modifier" since patients may be non-human. Systems SHALL either handle patient details appropriately (e.g. inform users patient is not human) or reject non-human patient records."

      to

      "The animal element is labeled "Is Modifier" since patients may be non-human. Systems SHALL either handle patient details appropriately (e.g. inform users patient is not human) or reject declared?animal records.

      The absense of the animal element does not imply that the patient is a human. If a system requires such a positive assertion that the patient is human, an extension will be required.

      (Do not use a species of homo-sapiens in animal species, as this would incorrectly infer that the patient is an animal)

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      Update the definition of the animal property description from: "This element has a value if the patient is an animal." to "This patient is known to be an animal." Update the comments section of the animal property from: "The animal element is labeled "Is Modifier" since patients may be non-human. Systems SHALL either handle patient details appropriately (e.g. inform users patient is not human) or reject non-human patient records." to "The animal element is labeled "Is Modifier" since patients may be non-human. Systems SHALL either handle patient details appropriately (e.g. inform users patient is not human) or reject declared?animal records. The absense of the animal element does not imply that the patient is a human. If a system requires such a positive assertion that the patient is human, an extension will be required. (Do not use a species of homo-sapiens in animal species, as this would incorrectly infer that the patient is an animal)
    • Lloyd McKenzie/Nat Wong: 5-0-2
    • Enhancement
    • Compatible, substantive
    • DSTU1 [deprecated]

      While the humans involved in capturing a Patient record would likely always know whether a given patient is a human or an animal, this isn't always conveyed by underlying systems as a discrete element. It could well be buried in text. From a discrete information perspective, there may be no means to tell that a patient is a human or a cat - and furthermore, no need to tell. We therefore can't use the presence or absense of "animal" to infer animal vs. human because that leaves no way to communicate "don't know/data absent". There are lots of systems that deal with humans but may occasionally deal with an animal (e.g. community pharmacy systems) that would have no way of determining whether to send the "animal" element. Right now, they would likely omit the element and have other systems infer that the data always referred to humans when in some cases it might not.

            Assignee:
            Unassigned
            Reporter:
            Lloyd McKenzie
            Lloyd McKenzie
            Watchers:
            1 Start watching this issue

              Created:
              Updated:
              Resolved: