# Valid values

**Category:** [Clinical (archive)](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/clinical-archive/153)
**Created:** 2011-05-23 12:43 UTC
**Views:** 10
**Replies:** 3
**URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/valid-values/12697

---

## Post #1 by @yampeku

I have a doubt about valid values \(or ranges\) for clinical data\. Has
clinical sense to define a range with discontinuous domain?
I am thinking if something like 'critical range' with \[\-100, 0\] and
\[100, 200\] makes sense at all\. Or maybe something like 'any positive
or negative number but zero' \]\-inf,0\[ & \]0,\+inf\[
I am not talking about normal or reference ranges, but more on the
kind of ranges that are currently being archetyped

---

## Post #2 by @thomas.beale

At the moment there is the possibility to define intervals like the following (from the ADL spec):

Examples of 2-sided intervals include:

- length matches {|1000|} -- point interval of 1000 (=fixed value)
- length matches {|950..1050|} -- allow 950 - 1050
- length matches {|0..1000|} -- allow 0 - 1000
- length matches {|0..<1000|} -- allow 0>= x <1000
- length matches {|0>..<1000|} -- allow 0> x <1000
- length matches {|100+/-5|} -- allow 100 +/- 5, i.e. 95 - 105
- rate matches {|0..infinity|} -- allow 0 - infinity, i.e. same as >= 0
Examples of one-sided intervals include:

- length matches {|<10|} -- allow up to 9
- length matches {|>10|} -- allow 11 or more
- length matches {|<=10|} -- allow up to 10
- length matches {|>=10|} -- allow 10 or more
The Interval type doesn't cope with sets of intervals, i.e. disjoint intervals, and I am not sure that it should directly. If there was a need, we would probably define a new kind of type allowing disjoint intervals. But.... is there a real need?

- thomas

---

## Post #3 by @yampeku

That was exactly my question :\)
I can see something like the &#39;critical range&#39; that I defined earlier
being used\. If you want to build archetypes about &quot;wrong&quot; status it is
quite possible that you want to define disjoint intervals \(if you have
a range of &quot;healthy&quot; values, then the inverse disjoint interval lets
you define the &quot;unhealthy&quot; range\)

---

## Post #4 by @thomas.beale

it can be done in current ADL/AOM as follows:

some_attr matches {
DV_QUANTITY [at0001] matches {
magnitude matches {|-200..-100|}
}
DV_QUANTITY [at0002] matches {
magnitude matches {|100..300|}
}
}

The above means that the two DV_QUANTITYs are alternatives for the single-valued attribute some_attr (and effectively the same even if some_attr is a container). So values like -50, 0, + 50 will all fail the above constraints.

Is this close enough to what you want?

- thomas

---


**Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/valid-values/12697
**Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/valid-values/12697