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4.3.12 Using ISO 3166 Country Codes with FHIR

Vocabulary Work Group Maturity Level : 3 Standards Status : Trial Use

4.3.12.1 Summary

Source ISO 3166 Home Page
System ISO 3166 is a 3 part standard, each of which defines a code system:
  • urn:iso:std:iso:3166 : Part 1, Country Codes (2-letter and 3-letter, and numerical codes)
  • urn:iso:std:iso:3166:-2 : Part 2, Subdivision (State/Province) Codes
  • urn:iso:std:iso:3166:-3 : Part 3, Historical Country Names
Note: the URI used for Part 1 would be urn:iso:std:iso:3166:-1 if it were consistent with the other URIs, but urn:iso:std:iso:3166 is used for legacy reasons.
Version If necessary to exchange the version (see below), use the year of release in the format YYYY
Code
  • Part 1 : Any of the 2-letter, 3-letter, or numerical country name codes defined in Part 1
  • Part 2 : Any of the codes for principal subdivisions (e.g province or state) of countries coded in Part 1
  • Part 3 : One of the 4 letter historical country name codes defined in Part 3
The codes SHALL always be represented in upper case, but (for robustness) comparisons are case insensitive.
Display Use the Country or State/Province Name
Inactive There are no codes that are inactive
Subsumption No Subsumption relationships are defined amongst the Country Codes
Filter Properties Regex on code - see below

4.3.12.2 Version Issues

A few country codes have been reused (e.g. CS). If a version is needed, simply use the year of publication e.g. 1998.

4.3.12.3 Copyright/License Issues

ISO Maintains the copyright on the country codes, and controls it's use carefully. For further details, see the ISO 3166 Home Page

4.3.12.4 ISO-3166 Filter Properties

The Part 1 Code system identified by the URI urn:iso:std:iso:3166 contains 3 types of codes for country:

  • 2-letter
  • 3-letter
  • Numeric

In almost all contexts of use, only one of these 3 subsets of codes are used / allowed. Value sets can be defined for these by enumerating the relevant codes . Alternatively, a regex can be used to define the value set intensionally. For example, this filter specifies only 3 letter codes: 

  "filter" : [{
    "property" : "code", 
    "op" : "regex", 
    "value" : "[A-Z]{3}" 
  }]

4.3.12.5 Value Sets

This specification defines 3 commonly used value sets for use with ISO 3166 Country Codes:

The latter two value sets are defined intensionally in this specification as a consequence of ISO Intellectual Property Restrictions.