[Tagging] Medical imaging facility

Stefan Tauner stefan.tauner at gmx.at
Sun Jan 10 08:19:50 UTC 2021


On Sat, 9 Jan 2021 17:32:37 -0800
Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the USA there are many private medical imaging facilities where you can
> get x-rays, ultrasound, CT scan, MRI etc, with a doctor's order.
> 
> I'm surprised we don't have a tag for this.
> 
> There are a number of specialty imaging centers in my city, and I send
> patients there when I want them to get outpatient imaging done: e.g.
> https://www.mycdi.com/locations/portland/ - and there are many more which
> are inside of a larger clinic or hospital.
> 
> Tags in use include healthcare=radiology - though this is a bit ambiguous -
> perhaps amenity=medical_imaging or healthcare=medical_imaging is clearer?
> https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/healthcare=radiology

I don't see how radiology is ambiguous - I think this is the correct
term in this context, quote WP: «In the clinical context, "invisible
light" medical imaging is generally equated to radiology or "clinical
imaging" and the medical practitioner responsible for interpreting (and
sometimes acquiring) the images is a radiologist.»
In Vienna this places are often called Diagnosezentrum (literally
Diagnosis Center) while the generally used term is Radiologie(-Zentrum)
and the respective departments in hospitals are also called Radiologie.
Sometimes Röntgen... (X-Ray...) is used for general medical imaging as
well - even by professionals[1]).

While this is perhaps less intuitive than "medical imaging" I strongly
believe we do not invent further descriptions of fields/specialities
within the healthcare realm since we already have too many too specific
ones that most mappers cannot handle and there is some indication that
this even applies to those who proposed it too (cf. my PS below).

So far I would have tagged them as healthcare=clinic and
healthcare:speciality=radiology. That speciality tag is also often
applied with the existing uses of healthcare=radiology you mentioned.
This indicates to me that people have thought about it and not just
invented it without looking for alternatives. I have checked a few of
the occurrences of healthcare=radiology and they seem to match what we
discuss here.

The healthcare=clinic part might be viewed as overstretching its
definition (because in our example I believe there is strictly no
treatment on site) and thus I would welcome an alternative. I would
have used healthcare=centre if it would not have been burned. But since
there are numerous of healthcare values already (which I dislike)
adding another one is warranted. After all, vaccination_centre will
most likely be approved next week for a similar tag.

There is some usage of health_service:examination=yes which comes from
the healthcare 2.0 proposal AFAICT. Also someone invented
healthcare:speciality=dental_radiology which might actually be worth to
document for those radiology centers that focus on that.


All things considered I would support a proposal of
healthcare=radiology for "A facility where diagnostic imaging of
patients is performed" or something like that.

PS: we also have healthcare:speciality=diagnostic_radiology which I
cannot distinguish from healthcare:speciality=radiology (just like the
two variants of maxillofacial surgery I brought up a few weeks ago).

1: https://www.lkh-hochsteiermark.at/cms/ziel/9489506/DE

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner



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