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Re: Schema fragments for everyday stuff

• To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Subject: Re: Schema fragments for everyday stuff
• From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@o...>
• Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:13:29 -0500
• Cc: XML Dev <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE03F9F23D@h...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE03F9F23D@h...>
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Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:

>Precisely.  And there are the aliases as well.  And 
>is Smith, John J. (1) born on Aug. 12 1954 the same as 
>Smith, John J. (2) born on Aug 12, 1954 and are either 
>of them lieing about that.
>  
>
Oh, those are just the well known problems with names as identifiers :-)

Apparently there are names used by several ?South American? tribes, 
which have components which are only to be shared with family members 
etc. -- hence the need for a <given 
confidentiality="foo">Fribbet</given> attribute. Names and birthdates 
are not always good unique identifiers, particularly when you can easily 
have *multiple* John Smiths on the same patient floor etc. which is why 
hospitals use their own unique IDs -- social security numbers are not 
entirely without problems, in two situations:

1) SSNs are *reused*, ostensibly when people die, but nonetheless.
2) Illegal immigrants often "borrow" a SSN from a relative. Not great 
when they don't also share the same medical conditions, allergies, 
medications etc.

In cases where it is really important to know who we are dealing with, 
we attach a photo to the chart.

But I digress...

In any case to deal with aliases in specific is why I have the "type" 
attribute on the <person.name> element. e.g.

<patient>
    <person.name>
        <given>John</given>
        <given>William</given>
        <family>Smith</family>
         <suffix>Jr.</suffix>
    </person.name>
    <person.name type="alias">
          <given>Jimmie</given>
          <family>Buffet</family>
    </person.name>
    <id authority="U.S. Social Security Administration" 
type="SSN">111-22-3333</id>
...
</patient>

In any case, that is perhaps more detail than needed for many 
applications, but for me its everyday stuff :-)

Jonathan

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