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RE: Schema fragments for everyday stuff

• To: 'Jonathan Borden' <jonathan@o...>
• Subject: RE: Schema fragments for everyday stuff
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 16:22:01 -0600
• Cc: XML Dev <xml-dev@l...>

It is for us too.  Identity results from identification; then 
the system makes it permanent.  Until then, they get a provisional 
identifier.  We also probably share the overlapping problem 
that some of our 'customers' are trying hard to fool us. This
is a tough tough problem when moving them from cell to cell, 
ahem, bed to bed, so recent photos and so on, but danged if 
they don't work out ways to get around those too. They are  
relentless, innovative and practiced dodgers.

Perhaps embedded RFID will help. ;-) 

Hmm.  I see you practice dot notation in tag names.  Any 
particular reason for that?

len


From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jonathan@o...]

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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