FamilyMemberHistory example pointing to patient using identifiers

1

Hello

I have a doubt about how to reference a patient using identifiers on FamilyMemberHistory messages.

Should we use something like this:

{
“resourceType”: “FamilyMemberHistory”,
“status”: “completed”,
“patient”: {
“identifier”: [
{
“value”: “12312312”,
“system”: “https://my.cool.system.com/something”
}
]
},
…
}

Or like this?:
{
“resourceType”: “FamilyMemberHistory”,
“status”: “completed”,
“patient”: {
“identifier”: {
“value”: “12312312”,
“system”: “https://my.cool.system.com/something”
}
},
…
}

We would like to use identifiers for patient referencing so we do not have to agree in a URL or format for a reference entry.

Thanks :slight_smile:

Pablo

2

The price of using identifiers in References is that you can’t query across them. So chained queries, _include, etc. will not work. Most apps therefore won’t be able to find the family history records because most systems will expect to link by URL and will not have the capability to search by identifier. The identifier in Reference is primarily intended for use in environments where the target of the reference isn’t available RESTfully. If it is available, there’s no “agreement” necessary. If the Patient is available from a RESTful endpoint, the URL base is the base of the endpoint and the rest of it is defined by the FHIR specification.

That said, your second example is correct. Reference.identifier is 0…1, so using array markers would be incorrect.

3

Thank you for your answer.

We want to use identifiers exactly because that: target references will not be available RESTfully. The idea is that if someone wants to access that resource, then they should search for it. In our case, at least for now, we are not interested in supporting all the FHIR protocol :wink:, just interchange messages without committing ourselves to have the information available for everyone and forever (or similar).

P