Patient → observation_period documented

Observation period defines spans during which a person is observable. Not a direct field-level mapping from Patient — derived from event data availability. Most implementations either skip this table or emit a placeholder row at person-creation time.

Conversion profile omop-patient-observation-period
A FHIR instance converts to observation_period iff it validates against this profile.
Path Card Type Binding / Fixed Comment
Patient.id 1..* Required to derive person_id (FK observation_period.person_id).
Patient.active MS Inactive patients may still have historical observation_period rows; not a hard gate.
ViewDefinition (Stage 1 flattener) omop-patient-observation-period
2 columns · resource Patient
column name FHIRPath type
id Patient.id id
subject_id Patient.id id
Condition: Derived per-person from data availability, not directly from Patient fields

Fields (5)

Vocabularies

period_type

Source Display Concept ID Concept Name
44814724 Period covering healthcare encounters 44814724 Period covering healthcare encounters
44814723 Period while enrolled in insurance 44814723 Period while enrolled in insurance
44814725 Period inferred by algorithm 44814725 Period inferred by algorithm
32817 EHR 32817 EHR

Edge Cases

Person has zero events
Skip the row (Strategy B) or use fixed window (Strategy A). Strategy B is preferred for production use.
Person is deceased
observation_period_end_date = min(latest_event, death_date). Do not extend past death.
Multiple disjoint observation windows
OMOP supports multiple rows per person. Use a gap parameter (e.g. 30 days) to merge adjacent periods or leave as separate rows.
Incremental loads
Re-derive end dates after each batch; rewrite affected observation_period rows for persons with new events.
Strategy A (fixed 1900-2100) is incorrect for production
Makes cohort definitions meaningless because every person appears observable for 200 years. Use Strategy B (min/max over events) for any analytic use.
omoponfhir, fhir-to-omop-demo, and fhir-x-omop skip this table
Cohort tooling treats these persons as having zero observable time, effectively excluding them from all OHDSI analyses.

Reference Implementations