Summary:
To facilitate communication between supply chain systems that typically use GS1 identifiers, and health systems that use FHIR identifiers (resources), we can link within FHIR using Identifier. GS1's GLN is typically found in the supply chain to identify "locations" between trading partners, on shipments, in routing messages in the GDSN, etc. FHIR's Location and Organization serve similar needs in identifying locations and legal entities. There is a simple way to designate a 1:1 relationship from a particular FHIR Location or Organization entity to a GLN.
Background:
Method
- In FHIR, we add an additional Identifier to the Location or Organization entity.
- The "system" is a urn that points the GLN's OID: http://oid-info.com/get/1.3.88
- The value is the GLN (wiki) as designated by GS1.
- A GS1 company prefix is part of the GLN - you don't need a further OID to identify the owning/signing organization.
- GLN lookup is available.
- Example: https://gist.github.com/joshzamor/a8d08f71152868a34021ce37cae318c8