We've implemented the $match operation for patient that takes FHIR parameters with the search criteria. How should this search work when the patient resource in the parameters contains multiple given names? We don't see anything in FHIR that speaks to this. Our best guess is that we treat it as an OR when trying to match on given names in our system.
We do see that composite parameters can be used in the query string as AND or OR, but not sure how this equates when using the $match operation.
$match is intrinsically a 'fuzzy' search. Different servers will implement it differently. Many will allow for alternate spellings, common short names (e.g. 'Dick' for 'Richard'), etc. They may also allow for transposition of month and day and all sorts of similar data entry errors. The 'closeness' of the match is reflected in the score the match is given. It's entirely possible get back a match candidate that doesn't match any of the given names exactly if the score on other elements is high enough.
So technically, I think SEARCH works this way:
AND /Patient?givenname=John&givenname=Jacob&givenname=Jingerheimer
The above is an AND clause. There is (can be) a person named with multiple given names "John", "Jacob", "Jingerheimer".
Now I realize SEARCH and MATCH are 2 different operations. But they are loosely related.
But Patient-Matching is an "art". Be careful, a "false positive" (with a high "score") is/could-be a very big deal.
But as mentioned from Lloyd....you have a little more flexibility with your implementation of $match.
I have worked on 2 different "teams".
One team, we never let "out the door" anything that was below a 80% match-score. (How you determine a match-score is a deeper discussion).
Another team, we made $match work with a "IF you give me enough information to find a SINGLE match, I'll give it to you" .. but if not, tell people "not enough info to match a single".
Patient Matching is HARD. Do not let anyone tell you different.
at HIMSS and other events..when people show a demo of moving data, I always ask "how did you match this single person on this side.....as it is that person on the other side?" As in "without patient matching...alot of work-flows fall a part at the get go"
Side note, I actually reported a bug with the MS-FHIR-Server (which the team fixed very quickly) (for SEARCH) here:
https://github.com/microsoft/fhir-server/issues/760
"name": [
{
"use": "official",
"family": "Kirk",
"given": [
"James",
"Tiberious"
]
},
Sidenote:
The Hapi-Fhir object to represent this is "ca.uhn.fhir.rest.param.TokenAndListParam"
Sidenote:
There is a feature request for Patient Match on the Ms-Fhir-Server github page:
