hl7-fhir

How to capture a Patient's healthcare literacy in FHIR?


Objective

For a specific use case we need to capture a Patient's healthcare proficiency. For that we have three classifications, eg literate, informed, and curious.

Question

What is the FHIR conformant way (resource, extension, etc) to store this?

Context

Hence which target resource or other FHIR conformant way to store this data?


Solution

  • There is not a specific element in the Patient resource to store 'literacy in healthcare'.

    I assume you want to keep this information inside the Patient resource rather than a related resource.

    I would propose at least two different conformant ways:

    Here are the examples:

    string extension

    {
      "resourceType": "Patient",
      "id": "123456",
      "extension": [
        {
          "url": "http://example.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/literacy",
          "valueString": "informed"
        }
      ],
      "name": [
        {
          "use": "official",
          "family": "Doe",
          "given": [
            "John"
          ]
        }
      ],
      "gender": "male",
      "birthDate": "1980-01-01"
    }
    

    metadata tag

    {
      "resourceType": "Patient",
      "id": "123456",
      "meta": {
        "tag": [
          {
            "system": "http://example.org/fhir/CodeSystem/literacy",
            "code": "informed"
          }
        ]
      },
      "name": [
        {
          "use": "official",
          "family": "Doe",
          "given": [
            "John"
          ]
        }
      ],
      "gender": "male",
      "birthDate": "1980-01-01"
    }