dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>]

2009/5/27 Ola Hodne Titlestad <olati@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> 2009/5/27 Lars Helge Øverland <larshelge@xxxxxxxxx>
>>
>>>
>>> >
>>> > hehe, I can see that my writing might have been misleading. I was not
>>> > thinking of individuals as orgunits as such, but I was trying to
>>> > explain how
>>> > this patient/community data is different from "normal" data.
>>>
>>> Its not necessarily as whacky as it sounds.  I guess if you think of
>>> the base class, source, rather than orgunit it can make sense.  And
>>> without it you do need to modify the datavalue to indicate the
>>> patientId.
>>
>> After all the DataValue was designed to allow for multiple implementations
>> of Source, this might be a viable option...
>>
> Yes, but patient data values will still need to reference patient and
> dataset and need encryption.
>

The datavalues don't necessarily need encryption.  Just the identifying data.

I think currently we don't explicitly reference dataset when we store
a datavalue.  We reference the dataelement, the period and the source.
 The dataset is sort of inferred from the dataelement-source
combination.

If the source refers to facility then we would need an extra field for
personID.  This would break the orthogonality of DataValue and
personDataValue which might be unavoidable, but would be a pity.

Treating the person as the source (note Abyot - I am very deliberately
not saying patient!) means that the link back to the relevant
collecting facility would have to be done through the organisation
hierarchy.  Back through the household and up.  Which is ok, but might
be tricky if that same hierarchy is split in two.

But one huge benefit of the person as source is that these persons
will never migrate from their source :-)

But they will migrate between households and between facilities.
Perhaps the model of OpenMRS (with as many addresses as you like) can
help here.  Particulalry if we additionally have a date related to the
address - so we have 'Bob Jolliffe, last known in household/family XXX
at address YYY'.  formerly of household/family WWW at address ZZZ'
etc.  This history also helps to bolster confidence in the reliability
of identity.

Cheers
Bob