2010/2/1 Bob Jolliffe <[email protected]> > 2010/2/1 Lars Helge Øverland <[email protected]> > >> >> >> 2010/2/1 Bob Jolliffe <[email protected]> >> >> you are taking about me? What silly names do we have in mind? >>> >> >> Yes. Just kidding, no silly names this time. >> > > Oh well. I guess we can always try silly indentifiers instead :-) > > We are going to implement system generated patient identifiers for the >> patient module. >> >> VN team has suggested: >> >> - Set of characters dependent on the organisation unit >> - Set of digits, include date and number of patients in the day. >> >> Viet has suggested an algorithm dependent on patient information and the >> time of creation. >> >> Jason has suggested an UUID. >> >> I think identifier for a person and identifier for a person's file are > subtley different. Patients may already have a number of personal > state-issued identifiers (hence the flexible identifier type). Many of > these might well provide the quality of uniqueness but not necessarily the > anonymity you would look for when for example tracking lab samples. But it > seems what you are looking at is the generation of a file number for the > patient. Like would be written on top of the cardboard folder in "real > life". In which case I would be tempted to follow the simplicity of the VN > team suggestion. Of course patients can migrate between org units which > needs to be taken into account. If privacy is more of a concern then this > information can instead be hashed, probably along similar lines to Viet's > algorithm. > > A few things to consider: > 1. there should be a check digit built in to the identifier > 2. regular expression validation can be useful > 3. if the identifier is meant to be human readable (and writable) as well > as machine readable then you don't want to go much over 8 characters > 4. before designing an identifier we should be very clear what the > identifier should be used for. There are lots of examples of "scope creep" > where identifiers primarily designed for social security, tax, national > identification etc are "repurposed" as health identifiers. Often they do > not have the required characteristics for this. So maybe that's the > starting point - what exactly can we say this identifier is to be used for > and not used for. >
Hi Viet, what are your thoughts on this? Is the identifier meant to be human readable? What is the main purpose of the identifier? Lars
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