Medicolegal Death Investigation (MDI) FHIR Implementation Guide, published by HL7 International / Public Health. This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 2.0.1-cibuild built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/HL7/fhir-mdi-ig/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

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Description

This US-specific implementation guide (IG) provides guidance on the exchange of information to and from medicolegal death investigation (MDI) information systems. It supports interoperability between the MDI case management systems (CMS) used by medical examiner and coroner offices; forensic toxicology and other laboratory information management systems (LIMS); electronic death registration systems (EDRS) of jurisdictional vital records offices (VROs); and ancillary workflows whose systems have the capability of using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). This guide provides MDI CMS developers with the technical details and best practices to standardize MDI fields and interfaces. Stakeholders may use the narrative portions of this guide to inform policies and practices for data exchange between systems contributing to, and using information from, death investigations. This guide can serve as a base for local specifications.

Relation to Other Standards

This MDI IG is based upon FHIR R4.0.1 and is a U.S. Realm Specification. It re-uses or further constrains FHIR resources published in the following FHIR IGs:

• Vital Records Death Reporting (VRDR) FHIR IG – STU 3 (2024-10-16), which supports reporting deaths by state registrars to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
• Vital Records Common Library (VRCL) FHIR IG – STU 2 (2024-10-11)
• US Core Implementation Guide – STU 5.0.1 (2022-01-13), which aligns with U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) v2, July 2021
• Occupational Data for Health (ODH) FHIR IG - STU 1.3 (2022-10-06)

Overview

This guide includes the following sections, listed at the top of each page in the menu bar:

• Home: Summary description and overview
• Background: Information on MDI dataflows and actors, the current work, and likely future MDI FHIR specification development
• Use Cases: Descriptions of MDI data exchange scenarios supported by this IG
• Best Practices: Guidance on implementation and use of this specification
• Security Recommendations: Description of a minimum level of security when implementing the MDI IG
• Specification: Technical details on implementing the specification
• Downloads: Links for downloading the full IG package as well as format-specific definitions files and example files in XML, JSON, and TTL
• Changes: List of changes made in each published update
• Content Transformation: Tables of changes to resource locations during harmonization between the MDI, VRDR, and VRCL FHIR IGs.]
• Artifacts: List of all FHIR artifacts specified by this guide, with brief descriptions

Audience

The audience for this IG includes architects and developers of MDI CMS and associated information management systems, such as forensic toxicology LIMS, as well as medical examiners, coroners, death investigators, and other professionals who collect and analyze data for death investigations. Business analysts and policy managers can also benefit from a basic understanding of the use of MDI data exchange to support interoperability.

Authors

• HL7 International - Public Health Work Group, http://www.hl7.org/Special/committees/pher
• Cynthia Bush (OD), pdz1@cdc.gov
• Kate Brett (DVS), kmb5@cdc.gov
• Margaret Warner (DVS), mmw9@cdc.gov
• Diana Wright, diana.wright@lantanagroup.com