Element binding

“A relationship connecting a definition to a DataElement it uses. A FindingClass’s binding may restrict that use to a subset of the element’s permissible values without changing the shared element or its other bindings.”¹

The binding is what makes element reuse safe. One severity element can serve many FindingClasses; each binding narrows the permissible values, sets selection cardinality, and carries its own modality applicability, which the vocabulary states “is distinct from its binding-specific applicability and is not an overridable default.”¹

An AnatomicLocation can also bind directly to DataElements and Measurements “describing that anatomy without requiring a FindingClass,” so a property of a normal structure does not need a finding to hang from.¹ IHE IDR already supports that shape, encoding an observation whose target is an anatomic entity with a property as its code.²

Synonyms and near-synonyms

• HAS_ELEMENT is the edge name used in the working definition graph.
• Binding alone usually means this, but “value binding” and “terminology binding” mean something different in FHIR.
• OIFM has no equivalent. An attribute is a member of exactly one finding model and cannot be shared or restricted, which is the structural difference between the two vocabularies.³

Identifier form

None published. Edges in the prototype graph carry properties such as modality, narrowing, exclusivity, and rank.

Where it is used

Next-generation vocabulary and Finding model format evolution.

Conflicts

IHE IDR expresses the same relationship as Observation.hasMember on a finding set and notes that those edges are untyped, so a report edge that cites which vocabulary relationship it expresses would need a FHIR extension.²

Footnotes

1. CDE vocabulary, next-generation working glossary ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. IHE IDR Phase II extract ↩ ↩²

3. Attribute ownership in FindingModelFull ↩