HL7 OID and FHIR URI/Resource issues - need for formal governance processes

Hi Iryna,

Actually, I believe this is a further error in the registration of the OIDs - they should all be type 4, not type 3. This further demonstrates the need for formal governance of OID creation/maintenance. (Half of those we found are registered as type 3, half as type 4)

As another example, consider 2.16.840.1.113883.4.746 and 2.16.840.1.113883.4.42 - both for College of Alberta Psychologists.

As far as Alberta is concerned, we do not want any other assigning authorities in our jurisdiction - for the simple fact that we need to maintain governance over what is created to prevent duplicates, and to be able to provide guidance to our users of these OIDs. We also want to ensure the metadata is meaningful so that it is clear what an OID is intended to represent. Having talked with the creators of these OIDs, I believe they are being used as type 4 OIDs - replicating the OIDs we initially created.

None of our colleges/associations would ever need to create their own sub-OIDs, so I am unsure why (other than error) any were created as type 3.

Thanks for the feedback,
Randy

Hello Randy,

The key to the answer is the context. 2.16.840.1.113883.4 - this is the root for public identifiers - namespaces; 2.16.840.1.113883.3 - is the external root for organizations.

I can guess 2.16.840.1.113883.4.747 is a namespace for a license number, issued by this college. and the other OID is identifying an organization as an assigning authority. Any sub-OIDs may be assigned by that college for own informational needs.

I don't think those are duplicates. The description is poor in the registry, I agree.

Kind regards,
Iryna

Hi all,

In performing some routine maintenance on our (Alberta’s) OIDs in the HL7 international OID registry, I discovered that someone outside of Alberta’s OID registry team has registered several new OIDs that duplicate existing OIDs we had registered 12 years ago (that I know of).

It seems there have been several failures in the registration process that also highlights governance issues I see with the new FHIR URI registry.

Here is an example:
2.16.840.1.113883.3.7893 - The College of Podiatric Physicians of Alberta
2.16.840.1.113883.4.747 - College of Podiatric Physicians of Alberta
These 2 OIDs were both granted to new requests, despite the fact that Alberta registered this one a few years ago:
2.16.840.1.113883.4.447 - College of Podiatric Physicians of Alberta, Canada license number

First - it is unclear why neither of the new OID requesters found the existing OID, and thus new ones were created. The detailed description of the new OIDs is too generic and doesn’t allow a user to determine what exactly it is referring to. However, the full names are nearly identical to the previously registered OIDs.

Second – these pending OIDs would have been reviewed by HL7 OID review process and approved. What is this process supposed to do if not identify duplicate requests?

Third – these are OIDs for Alberta domains and were created and granted without any contact made to the Alberta Health Information Standards team that governs the Alberta OID registry. Governance of our OIDs is intended to prevent duplicates in our registry. We also need to have formal governance set up over what OIDs/URIs are created for Alberta concepts. I would expect all jurisdictions would want similar governance over their URIs and OIDs, and FHIR resources submitted for their jurisdictions.

In summary, we have found 9 OIDs that were improperly created in the last 7 months considering just Alberta. All of the OIDs are related to various colleges in Alberta like the College of Podiatric Physicians of Alberta above. I would suggest that all provinces that have previously registered an OID do a search to see if they too have duplicate entries at HL7 international. In a 5 minute search I was able to find similarly duplicated OIDs belonging to both Ontario and Nova Scotia.

How do we go about getting the erroneously created OIDs removed from the HL7 international registry, or at least flagged as invalid?

Thanks for any help,

Randy Nonay,
BSc(Honours), BAIST, MCP
Conformance and HL7 Standards Analyst
Alberta Health - www.health.alberta.ca/about/HISCA.html
Health Standards, Quality and Performance Division
Analytics and Performance Reporting Branch
Data Management Unit
Health Information Standards Team