UK Core Design Principles

"High-level principles used to build the prototype UK Core. Will evolve into stronger guidance / best practice etc, following consultation and collaboration."

These are listed on this page and additionally there is a detailed development guide on the UK Core Profiling Approach used by the development team.

Key Principle:

• "FHIR assets must not be England specific. However, the initial prototype might use existing English specific representation of information, such as identifiers, for demonstration purposes only."

Other Principles

Extensions

• "Extensions will not be applied (hardcoded) to profiles*, but instead added to an Extension Library within the UK Core."

*There may be some exceptions, such as extensions in slices, where removal of the extension would make the slice of poor or invalid design.

ValueSets

• "Binding strength should be set to 'extensible', where not defined as 'required' by the FHIR standard."
• "Only use 'required' or 'preferred' binding strengths for ValueSets following consultation and agreement during collaboration." The binding should be decided as part of C&TA.

Cardinalities

• "Base resource element cardinalities should be retained."
• "No elements will be removed unless deemed clinically unsafe following consultation and agreement during collaboration."

Slicing

• "Must only be used where it enforces structure, such as a ValueSet binding or representation of an identifier."
• "Slicing must be Open."

Must Support

• "This will not be used for the initial build. It may be used in later iterations of the profile."