OpenMRS ID - Patient Identifier Usage outside OpenMRS

Development
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I am looking for the class that is used to generate the OpenMRS ID within code.

Has anyone been able to use this ID generation outside OpenMRS?

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Are you looking for a REST API for generating new patient identifiers?

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@dkayiwa I was looking for the code in core to understand how it works

However the REST API can also help in this to understand how it would work

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Is this good enough for you? https://qa-refapp.openmrs.org/openmrs/ws/rest/v1/idgen/nextIdentifier?source=1

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Thanks Daniel that is very helpful, where is the class that generates that ID? I cannot seem to trace it through the code

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Are you looking for this? openmrs-module-idgen/SequenceIdentifierResource.java at master · openmrs/openmrs-module-idgen · GitHub

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Thanks Stephen and Daniel. Interesting conversation here.

@dkayiwa the link you shared is great. It would be good to know if its possible to extend the generation of the OpenMRS ID on a custom application. Basically I would want clients on a custom app with IDs that are similar to the OpenMRS ID.

Is the a step by step guide on how to set this up?

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OpenMRS ID are generated by translating a monotonically increasing integer into the alphabet “0123456789ACDEFGHJKLMNPRTUVWXY” following the Luhn Mod N with a check digit. There are some sample implementations in various languages on the Wikipedia page. The algorithm we use can easily generate overlapping IDs if you don’t have a single source of truth for the monotonically increasing integer and that’s basically the service the identifier source in the ID Gen module provides.

If you just want OpenMRS-like IDs, the above should be enough. If you actually want to integrate those identifiers with an OpenMRS instance, your client should probably just grab a set of identifiers via the REST API and use those.

1 Like
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Accidentally issuing the same identifier to more than one patient can create a maintenance nightmare and put patients at risk, so all care must be made to never let this happen (the reason for having a single authority to ensure identifiers are only issued once).

If there is ever doubt, it’s better to throw away an identifier than risk giving it out to a second patient.

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Many thanks @ibacher for the feedback.

Yes I will just want OpenMRS like IDs. When I review the Luhn mod N algorithm - Wikipedia, it just only captures check digit algorithms and not how to generate OpenMRS like IDs.

Is there a guide on how to generate OpenMRS like IDs?

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Please look at the link that @dkayiwa posted earlier in this thread.

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Thanks @ibacher . Yes I saw @dkayiwa 's response.

My challenge is that the code references other OpenMRS classes.

I will want to implement this functionality on a custom app which does not have OpenMRS in the code base.

Please advise.