Validation of QuestionnaireResponse based on Questionnaire

[mmalvik]

Hi 👋

Disclaimer: I'm pretty new to FHIR so please bear with me.

I am wondering how you would approach validating a QuestionnaireResponse?
For simplicites sake say you have a Questionnaire with one question that has three answer options:

new ItemComponent
{
    LinkId = "myLinkId",
    Required = true,
    Repeats = false,
    Type = QuestionnaireItemType.Choice,
    AnswerOption = new List<AnswerOptionComponent>
    {
        new AnswerOptionComponent
        {
            Value = new FhirString("Yes")
        },
        new AnswerOptionComponent
        {
            Value = new FhirString("No")
        },
        new AnswerOptionComponent
        {
            Value = new FhirString("Do not know")
        }
    }
}

How would you go about validating a QuestionnaireResponse for this Questionnaire?
Is there any built in validation you can use?

[marcovisserFurore]

Hi @mmalvik,

Welcome to the world of Fhir!

I think you mean here the semantic validation of a QuestionnaireResponse to Questionnaire. So the following would be not valid:

    var item = new QuestionnaireResponse.ItemComponent();
    item.LinkId = "myLinkId";
    item.Answer.Add(new QuestionnaireResponse.AnswerComponent() { Value = new FhirBoolean(true) });

because the type of the answer should be a string and not a boolean.

Unfortunately, our SDK is not able to validate this. The Validator, that comes with the SDK, validates Fhir resources only on their structure, cardinality of all properties, invariants, etc. Not whether a QuestionnaireResponse fits with the corresponding Questionnaire.

We can add this feature to our roadmap.

[mmalvik]

Yes, you undestood my question perfectly.
In an ideal world I could have serialized a QuestionnaireResponse and then validated it against a given Questionnaire.

Very basic pseudo code to demonstrate my thinking:

var questionnaireResponse = GetQuestionnaireResponse(); // Get the response and serialize it somehow
var questionnaire = GetQuestionnaire();

var validationResult = ValidateQuestionnaireResponse(questionnaire, questionnaireResponse);

I don't know if my thinking is completely correct here though.

Thank you for a quick answer @marcovisserFurore 👍