dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Lars Helge Øverland <larshelge@xxxxxxxxx>]

2010/2/1 Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>

> 2010/2/1 Lars Helge Øverland <larshelge@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>>
>>
>> 2010/2/1 Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> you are taking about me?  What silly names do we have in mind?
>>>
>>
>> Yes. Just kidding, no silly names this time.
>>
>
> Oh well.  I guess we can always try silly indentifiers instead :-)
>
> We are going to implement system generated patient identifiers for the
>> patient module.
>>
>> VN team has suggested:
>>
>> - Set of characters dependent on the organisation unit
>> - Set of digits, include date and number of patients in the day.
>>
>> Viet has suggested an algorithm dependent on patient information and the
>> time of creation.
>>
>> Jason has suggested an UUID.
>>
>> I think identifier for a person and identifier for a person's file are
> subtley different.  Patients may already have a number of personal
> state-issued identifiers (hence the flexible identifier type).  Many of
> these might well provide the quality of uniqueness but not necessarily the
> anonymity you would look for when for example tracking lab samples.  But it
> seems what you are looking at is the generation of a file number for the
> patient.  Like would be written on top of the cardboard folder in "real
> life".  In which case I would be tempted to follow the simplicity of the VN
> team suggestion.  Of course patients can migrate between org units which
> needs to be taken into account.  If privacy is more of a concern then this
> information can instead be hashed, probably along similar lines to Viet's
> algorithm.
>
> A few things to consider:
> 1.  there should be a check digit built in to the identifier
> 2.  regular expression validation can be useful
> 3.  if the identifier is meant to be human readable (and writable) as well
> as machine readable then you don't want to go much over 8 characters
> 4.  before designing an identifier we should be very clear what the
> identifier should be used for.  There are lots of examples of "scope creep"
> where identifiers primarily designed for social security, tax, national
> identification etc are "repurposed" as health identifiers.  Often they do
> not have the required characteristics for this.  So maybe that's the
> starting point - what exactly can we say this identifier is to be used for
> and not used for.
>

Hi Viet,

what are your thoughts on this? Is the identifier meant to be human
readable? What is the main purpose of the identifier?

Lars