4 ms·

Alright, this one got me at Unicode and people having names at all.

tingletech 7y ago
what about Prince when he was in the trademark dispute about his name and he went by that symbol -- or maybe someone in a remote tribe where their script is not in unicode yet? What about an infant before they are named?
Exuma 7y ago
Apparently it's real: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36742226/example-of-a-name-that-is-not-mapped-in-unicode-code-points https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36742226/example-of-a-na...
samatman 7y ago
There are cultures in which it is considered unlucky to name a child before, say, their second birthday, so it's never done. In this case, it would be quite normal to have an 18 month old with no name at all. I mean, you could call them "Baby Surname" or something. But they don't have a name.
- pimmen 7y ago
  What if you have twins in that case? Or triplets? ”Baby 1 Surname”, ”Baby 2 Surname”, ”Baby 3 Surname”...
  - leovander 7y ago
    Typically entered as “Baby Surname”, “Baby Boy Surname”, “Baby Girl Surname”. For twins, yeah I don’t think I’ve seen and index appended to their name. I feel like even if the EHR system had the birth time, I would normally get their birthdate starting at midnight. Let’s hope the EHR system keeps a unique MRN for those twins, because down stream systems are totally going to commingle their records. Same applies to Jrs living in the same house as the parent, since their demographics match the parent’s other than birthdate.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      From what I’ve seen in multiple pregnancies; they’ll give a name like “Male Child 1” for the first male birth in that pregnancy and so on. All MRNs should be unique and everything else can be a duplicate. Every system should support name changes and merges. John Does come in all the time, and then you figure out their existing MRN, or their real name.
      - leovander 7y ago
        > All MRNs should be unique and everything else can be a duplicate. > Every system should support name changes and merges. John Does come in all the time, and then you figure out their existing MRN, or their real name. In theory yes, I’d hope to see that across the board, but fat fingering happens way too often on top of the reuse of mrn’s. I work in the IHE space, so I can point fingers at most of the big guys as we accept their HL7/CDA feeds and not even ids from the same system are consistent between the formats. I don’t want to get too off topic with that last line, but yeah we try to consolidate records that are received by leveraging Fellegi-Sunter[0]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_linkage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_linkage
stevula 7y ago
Electronic medical records often have to deal with newborns before they’ve been named. This was even a common issue at the community pharmacy where I worked, so not that unusua.
Piskvorrr 7y ago
People might have names, but they're not always known: you admit an unconscious patient amongst many (e.g. a bus/plane/whatever accident), unclear whose documents are whose (and whether there even are any), now what? USA has the assumed name John/Jane Doe - but that has obvious pitfalls of its own.

what about Prince when he was in the trademark dispute about his name and he went by that symbol -- or maybe someone in a remote tribe where their script is not in unicode yet? What about an infant before they are named?

Exuma 7y ago

Apparently it's real: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36742226/example-of-a-name-that-is-not-mapped-in-unicode-code-points https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36742226/example-of-a-na...

samatman 7y ago

There are cultures in which it is considered unlucky to name a child before, say, their second birthday, so it's never done. In this case, it would be quite normal to have an 18 month old with no name at all. I mean, you could call them "Baby Surname" or something. But they don't have a name.

pimmen 7y ago
What if you have twins in that case? Or triplets? ”Baby 1 Surname”, ”Baby 2 Surname”, ”Baby 3 Surname”...
- leovander 7y ago
  Typically entered as “Baby Surname”, “Baby Boy Surname”, “Baby Girl Surname”. For twins, yeah I don’t think I’ve seen and index appended to their name. I feel like even if the EHR system had the birth time, I would normally get their birthdate starting at midnight. Let’s hope the EHR system keeps a unique MRN for those twins, because down stream systems are totally going to commingle their records. Same applies to Jrs living in the same house as the parent, since their demographics match the parent’s other than birthdate.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    From what I’ve seen in multiple pregnancies; they’ll give a name like “Male Child 1” for the first male birth in that pregnancy and so on. All MRNs should be unique and everything else can be a duplicate. Every system should support name changes and merges. John Does come in all the time, and then you figure out their existing MRN, or their real name.
    - leovander 7y ago
      > All MRNs should be unique and everything else can be a duplicate. > Every system should support name changes and merges. John Does come in all the time, and then you figure out their existing MRN, or their real name. In theory yes, I’d hope to see that across the board, but fat fingering happens way too often on top of the reuse of mrn’s. I work in the IHE space, so I can point fingers at most of the big guys as we accept their HL7/CDA feeds and not even ids from the same system are consistent between the formats. I don’t want to get too off topic with that last line, but yeah we try to consolidate records that are received by leveraging Fellegi-Sunter[0]. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_linkage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_linkage

stevula 7y ago

Electronic medical records often have to deal with newborns before they’ve been named. This was even a common issue at the community pharmacy where I worked, so not that unusua.

Piskvorrr 7y ago

People might have names, but they're not always known: you admit an unconscious patient amongst many (e.g. a bus/plane/whatever accident), unclear whose documents are whose (and whether there even are any), now what? USA has the assumed name John/Jane Doe - but that has obvious pitfalls of its own.