4 ms·

Interesting; I didn't think I'd see an HL7 reference in this thread. I work somewhat with FHIR, which also has a HumanName[1] data type, and I think it handles

Interesting; I didn't think I'd see an HL7 reference in this thread. I work somewhat with FHIR, which also has a HumanName[1] data type, and I think it handles most of the cases in this thread. For those not familiar: FHIR is a standard that covers health and patient data. IMO, it's a pretty good model. (HL7 is the organization, and there are few other standards under it.) I'm less familiar with RIM; could you link to it's definition of a name? (The best I could find suggested that it was nothing more than an unconstrained piece of text.) [1]: https://www.hl7.org/fhir/datatypes.html#humanname https://www.hl7.org/fhir/datatypes.html#humanname

a-priori 7y ago
What's the purpose of structured modelling of names? Why does it matter which parts are family vs given vs whatever else? Lots of the W3C International Examples they give use a `<text>` field. Why not just use that? https://www.hl7.org/fhir/datatypes-examples.html#2.24.1.13.1 https://www.hl7.org/fhir/datatypes-examples.html#2.24.1.13.1
- nradov 7y ago
  It matters for collation order, if you want to show a list of patients sorted by family name.
  - Piskvorrr 7y ago
    Is this a current use case, or did that just make sense 100 years ago? (As in these assumptions: "tracking actual relationships in data is Hard, and family name correlates strongly with real-world relationships") I mean, it sort of works even today, but neither of the assumptions are as strong any more.
    - nradov 7y ago
      It's still a current use case for healthcare provider workflows. Also helps a lot when doing automated record linkage between different systems.
nradov 7y ago
Unfortunately due to the way the HL7 web site is structured there's no way to give a direct link. Go to the Normative Edition, Foundation, Data Types, Basic Types. http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?product_id=186 http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?pro... The FHIR data model is a little simpler to allow for easier implementation. In the vast majority of real world healthcare use cases it works well. But from a modeling standpoint if you need to cover odd edge cases it sometimes helps to look back at the old RIM.

a-priori 7y ago

What's the purpose of structured modelling of names? Why does it matter which parts are family vs given vs whatever else? Lots of the W3C International Examples they give use a `<text>` field. Why not just use that? https://www.hl7.org/fhir/datatypes-examples.html#2.24.1.13.1 https://www.hl7.org/fhir/datatypes-examples.html#2.24.1.13.1

nradov 7y ago
It matters for collation order, if you want to show a list of patients sorted by family name.
- Piskvorrr 7y ago
  Is this a current use case, or did that just make sense 100 years ago? (As in these assumptions: "tracking actual relationships in data is Hard, and family name correlates strongly with real-world relationships") I mean, it sort of works even today, but neither of the assumptions are as strong any more.
  - nradov 7y ago
    It's still a current use case for healthcare provider workflows. Also helps a lot when doing automated record linkage between different systems.

nradov 7y ago

Unfortunately due to the way the HL7 web site is structured there's no way to give a direct link. Go to the Normative Edition, Foundation, Data Types, Basic Types. http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?product_id=186 http://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?pro... The FHIR data model is a little simpler to allow for easier implementation. In the vast majority of real world healthcare use cases it works well. But from a modeling standpoint if you need to cover odd edge cases it sometimes helps to look back at the old RIM.