Identifiers

In many objects in Akita you will find a property named Id, which usually is a database-generated primary key. However, there are identifiers from external sources, such as SSN, VAT number, etc.

Patients

In most countries, citizens have national identification number for large variety of needs, including identification in health care services, taxation, legal identity, etc. Such numbers are known in LIS iLab as PatientId. However, the identifier itself is not enough to identify the record, as there are cases when more than one type of identifiers are in use. That's why this property has meaning only when type of identifier is defined (property PidTypeId). The pairs PidTypeId and PatientId are unique in iLab.

PidTypeId

Patient Identification Type is just a scheme of identification of the Patients. The number of allowed PidTypeId may vary from instance to instance and in time. There is an endpoint that returns allowed values in the instance. Here is an example set of allowed values:

PidTypeId	Name	Meaning
0	Anonymous	Patient has no national identifier
1	EGN (ЕГН)	Bulgarian Identifier - native citizens, see ЕГН
2	LNCh (ЛНЧ)	Bulgarian National Identifier - permanent residents
4	EMBG (ЕМБГ)	National Identifier used in ex-Yugoslavian countries, example: EMBG in North Macedonia

Constant values

The set of allowed Patient Identification Types vary across instances, but their meaning is fixed and are compatible between different laboratories. So, for example value 1 always will mean EGN (ЕГН).

Anonymous Patients

Anonymous Patient in iLab is referred to a patient, who hasn't national identifier (PidTypeId = 0). In that case, Patient is treated as not identified and it hasn't its own patient file in the system. Anonymous patients are used per visit and their records can't be reused in other visits. Every visit of a such person leads to creation of a new Patient object, even names, date of birth and other properties matches.

Examples

Here is an example patient with no national identifier (some properties are omitted):

{
   "id": 156224,
   "pidTypeId": 0,
   "givenName": "John",
   "familyName": "Doe"
}

And here is the one with EGN identification:

{
   "id": 823165,
   "pidTypeId": 1,
   "patientId": "8004061217",
   "givenName": "Иван",
   "middleName": "Георгиев",
   "familyName": "Петров"
}

Doctors

Doctors are identified by its UIN (Unique Identification Number). It's just a string and is a subject of agreement between interacting parties to use compatible sets. In most jurisdictions, healthcare regulatory authorities issue nation-wide identifiers and keep (usually publicly available) registers. Such numbers are preferred over private datasets.

Medical practices

Medical practices are identified by its PracticeNumber. Everything said about doctor UINs applies to practice numbers as well.

Examinations

The preferred coding system for examinations in LIS iLab is LOINC. However, it's laboratory's responsibility to comply with LOINC. So, even the property is named LoincId, it could be any string. There are endpoints for discovering available examinations (tests and panels) and it is a question of agreement between parties for synchronization of the examination codes.

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