PCD OID Management
Overview
Object Identifiers (OIDs) fill a need that comes up in many computing contexts, for identifiers that are guaranteed to be unique. With reliably unique identifier, you can be confident that your code for a measurement or a code set won’t collide with someone else’s. Unlike GUIDs or UUIDs, which are generated by a completely uncentralized process (using an algorithm that can run on any computer that is extremely unlikely to ever generate the same ID twice), OIDs are generated by a hierarchical network of aentities each of which is the ultimate authority for its own part of the tree.
IHE PCD now is one such authority.
There are a number of ISO Object Identifiers (OID) that are used in the PCD Technical Framework. This includes OIDs that relate directly to IHE PCD developed content (e.g., the registraton of a PCD-01 HL7 message profile, which requires an OID), as well as content from outside of IHE (e.g., OIDs identifying parameters defined in the ISO/IEEE 11073 standards).
References
CCITT, "Specification of Basic Encoding Rules for Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1)", CCITT Recommendation X.209, January 1988. ASN.1 is the original source of OIDs.
RFC 3061 - A URN Namespace of Object Identifiers. M. Mealling. A description of the general syntax and usage of OIDs.
IHE PCD OID
The following OID has been assigned to IHE PCD:
- 1.3.6.1.4.1.19376.1.6
OID Management
The generation and management of OIDs within the PCD will be coordinated with a general method for managing OIDs within the IHE, which is being worked on now. For the present, contact a Technical Committee Co-chair for assistance if you have a need or a question in this area.
OID Allocations
No OIDs have yet been allocated under the PCD arc.
ISO/IEEE 11073 OIDs
ISO/IEEE 11073 nomenclature terms have OIDs from the arc 1.2.840.10004.1.1.1.0.0.1
HL7 OID Use
OIDs are used extensively as unique identifiers for codesets and similar artifacts, particularly in HL7 V3, both OIDs generated by the HL7 organization, as well as referencing OIDs from other organizations.
HL7 allocates OIDs from the arc 2.16.840.1.113883 (joint-iso-itu-t.country.us.organization.hl7).
They maintain a registry at http://www.hl7.org/oid/index.cfm.