Accessing lab data via FHIR – part 2

In the previous post we took a look at the overall organization of the resources involved in representing Laboratory tests and what an API to retrieve them might look like.

But the queries that we discussed were rather ‘blunt’ – just retrieving results for a person with minimal filtering. While that’s often needed, being able to make more targeted queries can be a whole lot more useful (especially when we want to chart it or include data into Decision Support routines), and that brings us onto the topic of coding the data – the subject of this post.

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‘Extending’ a ValueSet in a profile

In the last post we talked about ValueSets and CodeSystems – and in particular how the ValueSet can be thought of as the set of possible values from one or more CodeSystems for a particular element in a given context.

As you know, the spec provides ValueSets and bindings for all coded elements, and a common need when profiling is likely to be to ‘extend’ the set of possible values – take the contents already in the ValueSet and add others. What’s the best pattern to do that?

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