FHIR:Vprepub-1.0 FHIR Profiling Guidelines STU3

Introduction

FHIR requires profiling. To do profiling in a comparable way we need conventions. This page lays out these conventions.

Canonical URL

Any conformance resource needs a canonical URL. This preferably leads somewhere but does not have to be processable. For Nictiz profiles we SHALL use the following structure:

http://[domain]/fhir/[ConformanceResource]/[project]-[name]-[semver]

Where:

• [domain] is "nictiz.nl"
• [ConformanceResource] is usually "StructureDefinition" or "ValueSet"
• [project] is preferably the same as its matching ART-DECOR project prefix
• [name] is the name that best depicts the purpose of the Conformance Resource

This convention aligns with international initiatives such as DAF and QiCore

Associating functional definition to StructureDefinition

Work in progress

Any StructureDefinition that profiles a Resource does so because there is some kind of logical definition dictating how. These functional definitions are known as Clinical Building Blocks, Health Information models or in Dutch Zorginformatiebouwstenen or ZIB's. Profiles SHALL have a traceable relationship with their functional counterpart(s).

The FHIR specification contains several solutions for this problem, ConceptMap (>=STU1), StructureMap (>=STU3), ElementDefinition.mapping. Neither of these solutions are mature and cover our use case.

• ConceptMap: works best for value sets and codes
• StructureMap: overcomplicated and unclear how to apply and whether or not this has a future
• ElementDefinition.mapping: is a free text mapping inside the profile. This means we cannot add mappings to profiles from third parties with updating their resource

Proposed way forward:

1. The functional definition live in ART-DECOR and every concept in this functional definition has a versioned id
2. The technical FHIR profile elements we want to map to have an optional @id attribute
3. In our own profiles we can make sure we populate this Element/@id and associate the functional concept on id / id basis. We found that DAF Profiles populate these ids as well.
   • Example: <element id="Patient:DAF-Patient.extension:race">...</element>

• In profiles we reference from third parties that do not have this Element/@id populated we need less precise method. We will deal with that when we need to