OID HL7 and URI FHIR
I am new to Level 7 standards and messaging paradigm and am reading on OIDS / URIs. While I know that OIDs are unique identifiers assigned according to the designating authority, I would like to know the following:
- If there is any difference in their usage for V2 and V3 messages.
- Whatis really sent over the wire using the OID?
- Why is there a switch from OID to URI in the context of the new FHIR HL7 standard?
Any help is appreciated.
thank
I have put together a detailed document that discusses the rationale for the changes, as well as some strategies to address mapping issues between OIDs and meaningful URIs. A small part of it is specific to Canada, but most of it has general applicability. See here
FHIR tries to move away from OID because of human readability:
The developers strongly prefer a user-readable URI. http://acme.com/patients/mrn is much easier to work with than urn: oid: 1.2.3.4.5.6.7
This text from the spec also answers your second question about representation. You are using a construct urn:oid:
in these places, so the OID is represented as a URI.
Please see https://www.hl7.org/fhir/terminologies.html for more information and https://www.hl7.org/fhir/terminologies-systems.html and https://www.hl7.org /fhir/identifier-registry.html for a list of systems and their representation.