Purpose of specimen_source_id?

[Christian_Reich]

And this one from here as well:

@IYabbarova

@Christian_Reich,I have a question about field specimen_source_id (The Specimen identifier as it appears in the source data). It seems like it should be specimen_source_concept_id, since specimen_source_concept_id is not presented in SPECIMEN table and this differ from other cdm event tables. Could you please check this matter?

I can see this is confusing:

• specimen_id: Just the running number in this table, carries no meaning.
• specimen_concept_id: The Concept representing what specimen, or sample piece of a body, this is in OMOP Vocab terms. Example is 4124271 “Abscess swab”.
• specimen_source_value: This is what the source would call it. They might have a record like “Swap from abscess” or something.
• specimen_source_id: This is a unique identifier in the lab management system of the source. They keep samples in gigantic freezers, often with fully automated sample management systems, and this would be the unique identifier. From an OMOP CDM perspective, this is an entirely meaningless number.
• specimen_source_concept_id: This doesn’t exist, because there is no standard coding scheme for specimen, like there is ICD-10 for Conditions. There are a few lonely Read, CIEL and deprecated SNOMEDs, but they don’t count as dedicated source vocabularies.

Makes sense?