P566 Clarify datatype rules

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P566 Clarify rules for making a data type change

Sponsoring Person

Joann Larson

Description

Clarify rules for making a data type change

Disposition

Accepted by INM on motion by __/__ (00-00-00)

Justification

This is a companion change proposal to proposals # and is a joint submission from Quest Diagnostics and Kaiser Permanente. The HL7 standard already provides for ways to distinguish between iterations of fields associated with the CWE, CNE, XCN, XPN, XAD and XTN data types. The purpose of this change proposal is to clarify that as of v2.7 HL7 will no longer use position or sequence base interpretation of these data types. Such meanings are left to local site agreements. Note that in the US those entities claiming conformance to the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) specifications not base interpretaion of these fields associated with these data types on position or sequence. No assumptions can be safely made based on position or sequence.