Question: should you use Concept Ids or Description Ids in HL7 instances?

Mar 14, 2012

Question:

In my brief look at the standards, I can’t seem to find any requirement or convention in SNOMED or HL7 regarding the the use of Description IDs vs Concept IDs in messages or datasets.

Is there any preference or can Description IDs and Concept IDs be used interchangeably?

Answer:

It is correct to use Concept Ids as the code in both HL7 v2 messages and CDA (and other v3 instances). Description Ids should not be used.

Explanation:

This is,unfortunately, not documented anywhere. It is implicit in the language used by te datatypes in both v2 and v3, though this is more obvious in v3,with the explicit focus on concepts. While its true that description ids also uniquely identify concepts, they additionally identify display strings which are duplicated by other fields in the appropriate types.