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Permanence of domains with no concepts (yet)?

(Tim Quinn) #1

The Book of OHDSI section 4.2.4 General Conventions of Domains includes Table 4.1 enumerating the thirty (30) domains in use in ATHENA (presumably at that time).

However, if you query the “domain catalog” in ATHENA today (December 2020), you would find 52 distinct domains.

A few of these are the “double domains” like Condition/Measurement for concepts used in columns like observation.value_as_concept_id (at least, I hope my understanding of this convention is correct). And I see a few new ones that appear to pertain to CDM v6.x:

  • Condition Status
  • Geography
  • Place of Service
  • Regimen

The remaining domains on the list currently have no constituent concepts.

My question: Are these “empty” domains in danger of going away? Or am I free to use them for my custom source concepts (above the 2 billion concept_id threshold)?

(Melanie Philofsky) #2

Which ones are empty?

and Place of Service are both in v5.3.1

These domains do not have standard concept_ids. These concept_ids only represent source codes. Don’t give any custom concept_ids a “double domain”.

Your understanding of the double domains is incorrect. The double domains are a hold over from a time long ago. And now only represent a few source codes.
This page provides a little more info on the observation.value_as_concept_id field.

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