MnM Minutes CC 20140305
M&M Conference Call 4:00PM Eastern Time (Date above)
Attendees
Jean Duteau, Rob Hausam, Katherine Duteau, Woody Beeler
Dealing with "no information" sections in CDA
We further discussed the issue of "no information" sections that was previously discussed on last week's call.
Rob expressed some concern that the use of a nullFlavor attribute at the section level may not necessarily and consistently be appropriate to convey the desired semantic. Yje example in question had to do with a "Problem List". Woody observed, and Rob agreed, that in a situation where it has been observed or is otherwise known that there are no problems (as opposed to not knowing if there are problems), the proper be representation would be an "empty" Problem section with no nested Problem entries. The use of the "NI" nullFlavor attribute on the section or the entries would be inappropriate.
The use of "NI" at the section level should be accompanied by ONLY the baer minimum of contained elements necessary to identify the section that is "NI." It was pointed out that in V3 messages, the message element name, being unique, would generally make it clear which element was lacking, without need for further elements underneath it.
It was felt that, in the absence of most of the participants in last week's discussion (especially Austin and Lloyd) on the call today, we could not further resolve the concerns or take a position on the issue. We should consider putting it on the agenda for further discussion on the call in two weeks (as there will not be a call next week due to the Harmonization meeting and additional conflicts).
