8.32 Pattern Product - Content

8.32.1 Scope and Usage

This is NOT a resource. It is not part of the FHIR schema and cannot appear directly in FHIR instances. It is a logical model that defines a pattern adhered to by other resources. This pattern serves two purposes:

• It offers guidance to work groups designing resources and helps ensure consistency of content created by different work groups
• It provides a standard "view" that might be useful for implementers in processing and manipulating all resources that adhere to the same pattern. (Tooling that supports this may become available in a future release.)

A "Healthcare Product" represents any type of product, manufactured or not, regulated or not, that is used in healthcare, for clinical or operational purposes. The Product pattern provides an abstraction with the common characteristics of Healthcare Products.

Note to Implementers: The Product pattern is being developed. The committee is looking for feedback on this pattern as well as its applicability to the different product resources - Medication, Device, BiologicallyDerivedProduct, Substance, etc.

8.32.2 Boundaries and Relationships

The Product pattern is instantiated in resources like Medication, Device, etc., and it is used in requesting a product (xxxRequest resources), or reporting a delivery or a usage (xxxUsage resources), or in a procedure.

8.32.3 Background and Context

This model represents a pattern. It provides a standard list of data elements with cardinalities, data types, definitions, rationale and usage notes that will ideally be adhered to by resources that fall into the "product" workflow category. However, adherence to this pattern is not mandatory. Not all healthcare domains are the same. Concepts that may be generally applicable (and thus are included in this standard pattern) might still not be relevant everywhere or may be sufficiently uncommon that they are more appropriate to include as extensions than as core properties of the resource. Work groups are encouraged to adjust descriptions, usage notes and rationale to be specific to their resource. As well, design notes in the comments column marked with [square brackets] identifies areas where domain variation is expected and encouraged. Other variation, including differences in names, cardinalities, data types and the decision to omit an element outright are also possible, but should be discussed with the FHIR Infrastructure work group's Workflow project to ensure the rationale for non-alignment is understood, to confirm that the deviation is necessary and to identify whether any adjustments to the pattern are appropriate.

This pattern provides a linkage to the W5 list of standard data elements. Resources that adhere to this pattern should ensure their w5 mappings are consistent, as is their data element ordering.