Terminology Fundamentals, published by HL7 International / Terminology Infrastructure. This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 0.1.0 built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/HL7/terminology-fundamentals-ig/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

Terminology Conformance

Page standards status: Informative

Terminology Conformance is the documentation that identifies the expected behavior of a system in handling different coded values. A key aspect of interoperability specifications is the ability to define conformance expectations. Conformance expectations allow authors of IGs or similar guidance to express exactly what they expect a system to be able to do. Similarly, they allow software vendors to identify exactly what a system is capable of doing. Finally, detailed documentation of conformance allows the comparison of the profiles of sending and receiving applications to identify how well they will inter-operate.

Testing of interoperability is limited when specifications include aspects where the conformance expectations are unspecified. By the time a model or data type specification has been constrained down to an implementable level, coded elements must be associated with an exact set of permissible concept codes that may be carried in those elements, i.e. there remain no codes which are ‘conformance undeclared'.