Medicolegal Death Investigation (MDI)
1.1.0 - STU 1.1 United States of America flag

This page is part of the Medicolegal Death Investigation (MDI) (v1.1.0: STU 1) based on FHIR R4. This is the current published version in its permanent home (it will always be available at this URL). For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

Home Page

Official URL: http://hl7.org/fhir/us/mdi/ImplementationGuide/hl7.fhir.us.mdi Version: 1.1.0
Active as of 2023-11-16 Computable Name: MedicolegalDeathInvestigation

Description

This US-specific implementation guide (IG) provides guidance on the exchange of information to and from medicolegal death investigation (MDI) information systems. It supports interoperability between the MDI case management systems (CMS) used by medical examiner and coroner offices; forensic toxicology and other laboratory information management systems (LIMS); electronic death registration systems (EDRS) of jurisdictional vital records offices (VROs); and ancillary workflows whose systems have the capability of using Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). This guide provides MDI CMS developers with the technical details and best practices to standardize MDI fields and interfaces. Stakeholders may use the narrative portions of this guide to inform policies and practices for data exchange between systems contributing to, and using information from, death investigations. This guide can serve as a base for local specifications.

Technical Overview

This MDI IG is based upon FHIR R4.0.1 and is a U.S. Realm Specification.

The STU 1 version of the specification defines FHIR resources to support two dataflows:

  • Death investigation findings exchanged between an MDI system and an EDRS via a document bundle: Bundle - Document MDI and EDRS
  • Forensic toxicology specimen analysis results sent from a forensic toxicology laboratory to an MDI information system via a message bundle: Bundle - Message Toxicology to MDI

The STU 1.1 version provides updates to align with relevant profiles in the Vital Records Death Reporting (VRDR) FHIR IG, STU 2.1 and adds new resources and guidance as described in the Change Log.

This guide includes the following sections, listed at the top of each page in the menu bar:

  • Home: Summary description and technical overview
  • Background: Information on MDI dataflows and actors, the current work, and relationship to other IGs, as well as likely future MDI FHIR specification development
  • Best Practices: Guidance on implementation and use of this specification
  • Specification: Technical details on implementing the specification
  • Terminology: List of all value sets used in this guide
  • Downloads: Links for downloading the full IG package as well as format-specific definitions files and example files in XML, JSON, and TTL
  • Change Log: List of changes made in each published update
  • Artifacts Index Summary: List of all FHIR artifacts specified by this guide, with brief descriptions

Audience

The audience for this IG includes architects and developers of MDI CMS and associated information management systems, such as forensic toxicology LIMS, as well as medical examiners, coroners, death investigators, and other professionals who collect and analyze data for death investigations. Business analysts and policy managers can also benefit from a basic understanding of the use of MDI data exchange to support interoperability. Implementers of this MDI FHIR standard must have the following US Core profiles implemented for each applicable use case:

MDI CMS and EDRS implementing the Bundle - Document MDI and EDRS for transmitting and receiving a Composition - MDI and EDRS:

Forensic toxicology laboratories and MDI CMS implementing the Bundle – Message Toxicology to MDI for transmitting and receiving a DiagnosticReport - Toxicology Lab Result to MDI:

Authors

  • HL7 International - Public Health Work Group, http://www.hl7.org/Special/committees/pher
  • Cynthia Bush (OD), pdz1@cdc.gov
  • Kate Brett (DVS), kmb5@cdc.gov
  • Margaret Warner (DVS), mmw9@cdc.gov
  • Diana Wright, diana.wright@lantanagroup.com