question about medical code

Adrian has added the medical code to the Identifier page [1]. It looks 
to me like in its simplest form it could also be used for the minimalist 
approach to identifiers that I have proposed [2]. Essentially, it only 
needs two properties:

codeValue 	Text 	The actual code.
codingSystem 	Text 	The coding system, e.g. 'ICD-10'.

Of course, they have to be grouped as a single unit, which the medical 
code page calls "code":

code 	MedicalCode 	A medical code for the entity, taken from a 
controlled vocabulary or ontology such as ICD-9, DiseasesDB, MeSH, 
SNOMED-CT, RxNorm, etc.

I must admit that I find the properties here to be a bit circular but 
I'm going to assume that greater minds than mind have investigated this 
and determined that it works.

I could add an example on my simplified identifier page, and/or could 
add a simplified example after Adrian's. Does that make sense?

I have one worry about using "code" however: I think that we, too, will 
have codes that need to be described in this way. Will there need to be 
a difference between codes of this type and identifiers? It seems to me 
that folks are often using "identifier" to me an identifier for the 
focus of the description, whereas "code" could be, for example, a 
description element like "audience level" or "government document type." 
In practical usage, will we need both?

kc
-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

Received on Friday, 25 January 2013 20:13:42 UTC