-------------------------- Not having a qualifier in II --------------------------
The datatype II should have a standarized qualifier which gives meta-information about II itself. As it is possible, as described, to add more than one II object to an entity, it should be recognizable which one means what. In run against this as someone wanted to know which one in the list of II's was the insurance number of a patient in the GPIC PatientExtendedInformation. The insurancenumber was needed for automated processing. Suggestions about using the OID for this purpose did not solve the problem, because the OID has no metainformation. An application which wants to process the insurancenumber should in that case resolve the OID, and after resolving it, and getting information about the organisations/companies which are behind the OID, know which one is an insurance-company, The problem can even be more complicated because an organisation can have more functions. For example, it is possible for an organisation to deliver health-insurance and a monthly income for disabled people. Even when they have to OID's for those two functions, the application which does automated processing should then know which OID serves what purpose. It is also possible that an OID points to an unknown organisation, how can an application know what kind of organisation that is, and what purpose it serves. In the end, it would be very easy if there was a qualifier. Perhaps a application does not want to know the name and address of the organisation which is the owner of a certain number. ---------------------- - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
