I’m looking at a bunch of screening-style archetypes where a presence field (encodes boolean information) is modelled as a choice of: DV_BOOLEAN, DV_CODED_TEXT, DV_TEXT Some examples: openEHR-EHR-EVALUATION.pregnancy_summary.v0 Multiple pregnancy? openEHR-EHR-OBSERVATION.adverse_reaction_sc…

Hi Sidharth, There is a deliberate modelling strategy behind the repeating pattern evident in these archetypes. The family of screening questionnaire archetypes is attempting to establish a standardised pattern in an area where almost no standardisation currently exists. Most questionnaires are cr…

Linking two threads with some previous related discussions here: Scores or scales with mixed data types or explicit NULL values When do i use null flavours and when the archetype absence?

Others will give a more complete answer. But usual pattern is as you say yes/no/unknown/other(namely). Very few things in medicine are binary. Unknown isn’t nescessarily uncertainty/absence of information. Eg in advance decisions it means patients doesn’t know if they want resuscitation. Which is …

[image] joostholslag: What is the isssue witht this pattern for you? Is it just engineering elegance or something else? So long story, but.. When building EHR systems for many practices previously, I saw that most doctors fallback on unstructured text summaries as the definitive truth even i…

@Sidharth_Ramesh I have been following your research into using archetypes as tables in a relational database. While storing Reference Model (RM) data relationally is challenging, I am not convinced that simplifying the RM is the best approach. I believe it is possible to maintain the full RM when …

[image] heather.leslie: the data equivalent of jello I just have to say that the lego analogy of openEHR has been surpassed. I’m stealing this (with references to you every time I mention it of course).

Amazing! This is exactly the answer I was looking for @heather.leslie ! So in short, if you were on a boat with DV_TEXT, DV_CODED_TEXT, and DV_BOOLEAN (for this use case). And you were forced to keep only one, you’d throw DV_BOOLEAN first, DV_TEXT next and keep DV_CODED_TEXT? Would you maybe conside…

Well, in the interests of standardisation, the DV_CODED_TEXT is the generic and I guess the Editor’s would suggest it is their preferred value set, as explained above. But we will definitely find examples, some quite sensible, where this doesn’t work and we need DV_TEXT as our ‘get out of jail free’…

I guess it could have some good visuals too :joy:

Absolutely. That’s what I immediately thought of when I read it.

On DV_BOOLEAN choice fields and usage with null flavors

Clinical

sebastian.garde (Sebastian Garde) 10 July 2026 14:28 2

Linking two threads with some previous related discussions here:

Topic		Replies	Views
Representing binary values with DV_BOOLEAN Technical (archive)	25	123	10 February 2011
Archetypes for modelling yes/no/unknown questions Clinical archetype , template	13	592	1 July 2023
Best type for encoded values including "other" (implying free text) Clinical (archive)	8	35	3 October 2012
Clinical scales - ordinal or coded text? Clinical modelling-patterns	26	2953	27 May 2020
Revisiting symptom/sign Clinical modelling-patterns , archetype	47	3976	16 October 2021
Normal range/reference ranges for text data type Clinical (archive)	17	82	30 September 2016
Scores or scales with mixed data types or explicit NULL values Clinical archetype	60	1848	24 April 2025
Range containers in ordinals Clinical archetype	22	615	11 December 2023
Why is value not optional for DvCodedText RM	27	1091	20 October 2021
Uncertain, unknown and no information Clinical	23	2500	12 November 2021

On DV_BOOLEAN choice fields and usage with null flavors

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