[caldeveloper-l] Fwd: Re: Questiona about timezones

Michael Douglass mikeadouglass at gmail.com
Mon Oct 1 20:03:45 PDT 2018


This discussion is taking place on the http working group list. I 
believe this has the entire thread so far



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: Questiona about timezones
Resent-Date: 	Tue, 02 Oct 2018 01:11:55 +0000
Resent-From: 	ietf-http-wg at w3.org
Date: 	Tue, 2 Oct 2018 11:11:18 +1000
From: 	Grahame Grieve <grahame at healthintersections.com.au>
To: 	roberto at teamdigitale.governo.it
CC: 	Mark Nottingham <mnot at mnot.net>, HTTP Working Group 
<ietf-http-wg at w3.org>



hi

Quoting from an API lead for one of the major health record systems in 
the world:

------
Internally, we have some variation on how this is handled, and it 
depends on context. A specific date can have a zone tied to it. This is 
usually to capture context of the user that entered data, so that an app 
can choose to display that later.

In addition, we have a location that captures the local zone of the 
patient. This is so you can translate from a "local time" to a real 
instant in time correctly - like the med dosages. This is most common 
(for us) in inpatient scenarios. However, I would imagine that a 
consumer-facing app would need to do something similar when there is no 
encounter (for example) that would have a location tied to it. Note: we 
don't have a "zone" on the Location in FHIR, - so right now, someone 
would have to extrapolate this from geolocation, if it existed.

Finally, we have apps where the use case makes more sense to convert all 
times to the local user's time zone. This is "client side" logic 
usually. From a server perspective, this isn't normally an issue it has 
to deal with except for the Narrative and other displays we return. I 
know we have a translation extension + the capability to add language 
tags to narratives now. It would be nice if I could only choose to 
return the "original" + the requested translation, and this is the main 
scenario I can think of that would start to push for headers

The assumption being that the "translation" would take Locale as well as 
zone preferences into consideration

------
Grahame


On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 11:07 PM Roberto Polli 
<roberto at teamdigitale.governo.it 
<mailto:roberto at teamdigitale.governo.it>> wrote:

    Hi Grahame,

    I think that your proposal is interesting. Can you please share some
    use cases?

    Adding a `Content-Timezone` means adding another representation
    modifier,
    which has some implications when you have to audit request and
    responses.

    The `Timezone` header instead seems to me overly complex.

    Let me know,
    R.


    Il giorno lun 1 ott 2018 alle ore 12:54 Grahame Grieve
    <grahame at healthintersections.com.au
    <mailto:grahame at healthintersections.com.au>> ha scritto:

        ok thanks. I'm not sure I have the time personally. I'll ask
        around in the health standards community to see if there's
        anyone who wants to take this up and push it.

        Grahame


        On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 4:18 PM Mark Nottingham <mnot at mnot.net
        <mailto:mnot at mnot.net>> wrote:

            Hi Grahame,

            This has come up a few times. While getting it into Web
            browsers would be difficult (thanks to the inherent privacy
            issues, as well as the existence of other solutions),
            defining it for non-browser applications simplifies the
            problem somewhat, and based on the number of times it's come
            up, might see some take-up.

            Personally, I like the proposal in:
            http://www.w3.org/mid/DBDF1A48B00F2042B20953D2ACE4968806A0ADE526@sha-exch14.shared.ifeltd.com

            If you (or someone else) wanted to sketch out a proposal in
            an Internet-Draft, we could discuss it and decide whether
            there's consensus to adopt.

            That said, the gating factor is likely to be finding someone
            who's willing to put in the work of editing a document. If
            we can find people to help in that process, would you be
            willing to do so?

            Cheers,



            http://www.w3.org/mid/DBDF1A48B00F2042B20953D2ACE4968806A0ADE526@sha-exch14.shared.ifeltd.com

             > On 26 Sep 2018, at 11:18 am, Grahame Grieve
            <grahame at healthintersections.com.au
            <mailto:grahame at healthintersections.com.au>> wrote:
             >
             > Hi
             >
             > We've run into a problem with the FHIR HTTP API to do
            with timezones (FHIR = HTTP API for healthcare). TImezones
            are hard to deal with, and we can't nail everything down
            (duh!). There's cases where the server needs to know the
            client's timezone to perform certain tasks correctly on
            behalf of the client, and the client wants to know the
            server's timezone to fully understand certain outputs
             >
             > The classic response is for this to be handled by
            javascript client side, but that doesn't work for a data
            (json) API. Note also that in principle, servers should not
            have a timezone, but in practice, every clinical system in
            the world does have a timezone, and it matters a whole lot.
            If we care about legacy data, we have to have the client
            knowing what the server defaults to... and we really care
            about legacy data. And various clinical protocols have
            operational ties to timezones, not just offsets (giving
            medications at the right time really does matter)
             >
             > Has anyone got any comments on this?
             >
             > I like the header described in
            https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sharhalakis-httptz-05 and
            would specify it for both directions, but that's not blessed
            by the http-wg?
             >
             > Grahame
             >
             > --
             > -----
             > http://www.healthintersections.com.au /
            grahame at healthintersections.com.au
            <mailto:grahame at healthintersections.com.au> / +61 411 867 065

            --
            Mark Nottingham https://www.mnot.net/



        -- 
        -----
        http://www.healthintersections.com.au /
        grahame at healthintersections.com.au
        <mailto:grahame at healthintersections.com.au> / +61 411 867 065



    -- 


    	Roberto Polli
    /Full Stack Developer
    M. +39 3406522736/ 	

    ·D

    	
    	
    	
    	*TEAM PER LA
    TRASFORMAZIONE
    DIGITALE*
    /Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri/ 	

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-- 
-----
http://www.healthintersections.com.au / 
grahame at healthintersections.com.au 
<mailto:grahame at healthintersections.com.au> / +61 411 867 065
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