FHIR Uri naming convention - seeking input from other jurisdictions

You also need to be careful how detailed you get in the description. In your example of using the College of Nursing and calling it ab-rn-identifier means it also includes the person's role. What happens if the RN upgrades their education and becomes a Nurse Practitioner? They still have the same Identifier as given by their college, so nothing should need to change as far as their identifier goes

The reality is that both business identifiers and descriptive names can change over time. For most situations, implementers are going to have an easier time with names. Even if the organization renames, using the 'old' name will still make more cognitive sense than using a random identifier. That said, part of the question is "what do systems typically have?" If existing systems identify an organization by a particular identifier rather than a descriptive URL, then use a descriptive URL as the 'system' for that identifier and send the identifier in the value.

If you're dealing with a URL for an identifier rather than an organization, it's best to have the name focus on the credential and not the organization that gives it. "ab-rn-identifier" is better than "ab-college-of-nursing-rn-id", for example, just in case the Alberta College of Nursing (or whatever they call themselves) changes their name.

We have a question in regards to the identifier management and appreciate if you could shed some lights on. In our current URL naming convention we include the organization name to make the URL human readable, e.g. ehealthontario.ca/fhir/NamingSystem/id-university-health-network-mrn

As we are supporting more and more healthcare service providers, we are concerned about the sustainability of issuing URL based on organization name – see below for a few examples of the organizations.
• Reconnect Community Health Services
• Dilico Anishinabek Family Care
• Carizon Family and Community Services
• Community Counselling Centre of Nipissing
• Catholic Family Services of Simcoe County
• K-W Counselling Services
• Family Service Thames Valley
• Counselling Centre of East Algoma
• Service familial catholique Ottawa/Catholic Family Service Ottawa
• Women's Shelter, Second Stage Housing and Counselling Services of Huron

We are contemplating if we should consider revisiting the naming convention to move away from using organization name but to use business identifiers such as MOH generated unique identifier to form the URI. See examples of the two flavors below.

URL using organization name:
ehealthontario.ca/fhir/NamingSystem/id-reconnect-community-health-services-mrn
URL using business identifier:
ehealthontario.ca/fhir/NamingSystem/id-ohfs-facility-385-mrn

We'd like to know how the other jurisdictions are handling this. Do you use the organization name or a business identifier, or another approach? If you are using the organization name, how do you manage long organization names and organization name changes? Your feedback is greatly appreciated.