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When designing resources for FHIR, HL7 works to ensure that resources are clearly differentiated with as little overlap in functionality as possible.

However this is often not possible, and that's particularly a problem when dealing with legacy information that's poorly described, and therefore poorly distinguished. Some typical examples where legacy information might be poorly differentiated:

  • Condition vs Observation
  • DiagnosticReport vs DocumentReference

Sometimes, the differentiation will be based on the source of the information, rather than the nature of the information. For instance, an EHR might have a set of DiagnosticReports that it received directly from a lab, and other diagnostic reports as DocumentReferences because they were recieved from the patient by scanning paper documents.


For further information, see [Jira 19251]

Todo: migrate content to here

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