What is an OID number
An OID number is a universally unique id, and is used in many different types of industries for identifying many different types of items and or entities. It is common in the Healthcare industry to use an OID number to identify the many different Healthcare Organizations (also known as Assigning Authorities), IHE profile templates, medical terminology and coding systems.
OID numbers are hierarchically structured. Each number separated by the “dot” represents a hereditary relationship to each other. Let’s look at the HL7 organization OID number as an example. The base OID number for the HL7 organization is “2.16.840.1.113883”. Each number in the OID represents a different entity starting with the first number “2”. You will see this number as the base to many OID numbers used in the Healthcare industry.
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HL7 OID Number 2.16.840.1.113883.3
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Number
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Description
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2
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The number 2 is the top level number in the HL7 OID number. The number two is a unique number that identifies the Joint International Standard Organization (Joint-ISO).
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16
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The number 16 identifier is a “Country” identifier. This identifies that the sub numbers are unique to the particular country that follows.
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840
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The number 840 represents the United States of America
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1
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The number 1 following the US id identifies that the remaining numbers in the sequence of numbers represent an organization.
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113883
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The numbers 113883 is the unique id assigned to the HL7 organization.
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3
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This 3 following the HL7 organization number is a sub tree that HL7 has setup to allow Healthcare organization to create and manage their own OID numbers. (Thank you HL7). To register an OID number visit http://www.hl7.org/oid/index.cfm.
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The HL7 organization controls the sub numbers that may follow the base number. However, HL7 has provided a sub number of 3 (2.16.840.1.113883.3) called an “External Use Roots” which is a sub tree that allows healthcare organization to register and manage their own OID numbers for their use like the Assigning Authority ID (or OID number for your organization). For example the unique OID number for Qvera is “2.16.840.1.113883.3.3702”.
How can I find out more about a paticular OID number
OID numbers can be looked up at either http://www.hl7.org/oid/index.cfm or http://www.oid-info.com/
