Observation

An observation is considered a type of health event that records some characteristic of the patient or some procedure performed on the patient, but excludes specialised events such as medication. An observation in the DDS is much broader than an observation in FHIR. Because observations may be highly specialised, like encounters, only the generic properties are illustrated in this article. The type of observation is deduced from the observation concept itself. Observations may be linked at any level of nesting. In particular, tests and concept results observations are considered as 2 separate but linked observations, one for the test, the other for the result. This varies the Discovery observation model from the FHIR model that includes both test and result in the same observation. For example, a blood pressure would be modelled as 3 observations as follows: Observation 1 Blood pressure Observation 2 Systolic blood pressure value= 120, part of observation 1 Observation 3 Diastolic blood pressure value= 80, part of observation 2