Dear All A reminder on why flavour of null is at the ELEMENT level: it allows a composition with mandatory data to be saved even if the data is not available, or allows a reason to be stated for data that is missing. It also allows us to deal with the HL7 flavour of null on the data types.
I am concerned that the flavour of null is set to DV_CODED_TEXT and not DV_TEXT (ie. it has to be coded from a terminology). I agree that some systems will want things coded for safety in some situations, but I believe that this should be handled through archetypes and templates. Laboratories will want to use this for all sorts of reasons, one clear example is when an electrolyte sample has haemolysed - and they cannot give a potassium reading (they do not want to omit it!) So I want to propose that the flavour of null is set to DV_TEXT. Cheers Sam Heard - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
