MeridianMERIDIAN

Gender

identity.person.gender

Administrative gender per HL7 FHIR AdministrativeGender: male, female, other, or unknown. Matched case-insensitively (ac-02), so "Male"/"MALE" validate. Identities beyond the administrative four (e.g. non-binary) map to FHIR `other` at the data layer.

Casts to
VARCHAR
Scope
broad_words
Standard

Told apart

1 of the 13 other person types accept every one of these samples on shape alone.

Background

Origin

HL7 FHIR's AdministrativeGender value set is defined as the gender of a person used for administrative purposes.[1] Its code system has four codes: male, female, other and unknown.[2] The value set is owned by HL7's Patient Administration Work Group.[1] It has been normative since FHIR v4.0.0.[1]

FHIR defines Patient.gender as the gender that the patient is considered to have for administration and record keeping purposes.[3] FHIR says this gender is needed to identify the individual, in combination with at least name and birth date.[3] FHIR notes that the gender might not match the biological sex as determined by genetics or the individual's preferred identification.[3]

HL7 version 2's administrative sex table uses single-letter codes, including F for female, M for male, O for other and U for unknown.[4] That version 2 table also has codes for ambiguous, not applicable and non-binary.[4] ISO/IEC 5218 is a separate standard that codes human sexes as 0 for not known, 1 for male, 2 for female and 9 for not applicable.[5]

Use

FHIR's comment on the unknown code says it means a proper value is applicable but not known.[2] Keep unknown apart from an empty cell: the first is a recorded answer, while a blank may only mean that nobody filled the field in. (Meridian's view)

FHIR says systems should not infer any specific clinical meaning from Patient.gender without pre-coordination with exchange partners.[6] FHIR offers separate extensions for gender identity and for sex parameter for clinical use.[6] FHIR notes that the vast majority of systems and contexts only support male and female.[3] Treat this column as a record-keeping field, and look for a dedicated field before using it for any clinical or identity question. (Meridian's view) When combining it with HL7 version 2 or numerically coded files, build an explicit mapping table rather than translating codes by eye. (Meridian's view)

Sources

  1. [1]Valueset-administrative-gender - FHIR v5.0.0standard
  2. [2]Codesystem-administrative-gender - FHIR v5.0.0standard
  3. [3]Patient - FHIR v5.0.0standard
  4. [4]administrativeSexstandard
  5. [5]ISO/IEC 5218 - Wikipediasecondary source
  6. [6]Patient - FHIR v5.0.0standard

Detection notes

Sourced to HL7 FHIR AdministrativeGender (male | female | other | unknown), replacing the prior self-labelled-illustrative list. Matched case-insensitively per ac-02. The administrative value set deliberately collapses identity detail: non-binary and similar map to `other`, declined/withheld to `unknown`; those literal strings are not enum members.

Use it

CLI · DuckDB
$ finetype infer -i "Male" --mode column
→ identity.person.gender

SELECT ft_infer('Male');
-- → 'identity.person.gender'
Cast expression
CAST({col} AS VARCHAR)

Schema

https://meridian.online/schemas/identity.person.gender · Frictionless type string

finetype taxonomy identity.person.gender -o json-schema

Type Registry