Use more specific code for Ulcus in medical history?

[michaelonken]

[via data4life]

Ulcus: Might it be possible to use one of the child-codes of SNOMED 56208002 (“Ulcer (morphologic abnormality)“) here? Either as the result (with a generic code for examniation) or as the code itself, with value[x] left out (cf. Observation code patterns 1 & 4 from the FHIR spec)

[michaelonken]

More context: Right now Ulcer uses the SCT 56208002 code ("Ulcer (morphologic abnormality"), i.e.

• Observation.code = "Ulcer (morphologic abnormality"
• Observation.value = "superficial" or "deep" or "no" or "procedure not done"

The proposal is to allow a more specific coding by facilitating one of the child codes 56208002, which tell more about the specific abnormality of the Ulcer than the parent code does. One of these two ways are proposed:

1. Observation.code = <Ulcer (morphologic abnormality> and Observation.value = , e.g. "Acute ulcer"
2. Observation.code = and Observation.value not being set

I think we should also try to keep the original value coding ("superficial" or "deep" or "no" or "procedure not done") and do a slicing on Observation.value[x].

From the two proposals I'd personally prefer 1.