An abstract data type whose specification otherwise conforms to the ISO 21090 representation of a mailing and home or office address. This class is primarily used to communicate data that will allow printing mail labels, or that will allow a person to physically visit that address. The postal address datatype is not intended maintain additional information, for example, that might be useful for finding geographic locations (e.g. GPS coordinates) or for performing epidemiological studies. Other, more appropriate data structures should be used to capture such additional information. Structurally addresses are sequences of address parts, but add a "use" code and a valid time range for information about if and when the address can be used for a given purpose. Within the LRA this data type is specialised into three flavors to support the logical representation of address structures specified by:

• NPfIT MIM Datatypes Implementation Manual;
• Person Demographic Service; and
• NHS Data Model and Dictionary.

The use and validTime (Low and High) attributes may be used to represent the use and useablePeriod attributes within NPfIT MIM Address data type flavors. It should be noted, however, that the NPfIT MIM flavors misuse the useablePeriod attribute to specify the period of validity of an address rather than using the validTime (Low and High) attributes. The PDS PERSON_ADDRESS class also specifies equivalent attributes. For NHS Data Model and Dictionary ADDRESS classes, the corresponding information is specified using an associated ADDRESS ASSOCIATION class.

Specializes

ANY

Attributes

Name	Data type	Occurs	Description
part	AD.Part	0..*	As ISO 21090, a sequence of address parts, such as street or post office Box, city, postal code, country, etc. Any instance of AD that is not is null must have at least one address part.
use	PostalAddressUse	0..*	A set of codes to indicate to a system or user which address in a set of like addresses to select for a given purpose. An address instance may therefore be associated with number of intended uses. ISO 21090 specifies use of the HL7 v3 PostalAddressUse code system. The LRA adopts a subset of this and specifies a number of additional codes to meet the intended use requirements of address structures specified by: NPfIT MIM Datatypes Implementation Manual; Person Demographic Service; and NHS Data Model and Dictionary
useablePeriod	QSET_TS	0..1	As ISO 21090, a General Timing Specification (GTS) specifying the periods of time during which the address can be used. This is used to specify different addresses for different times of the week or year and not the overall period of validity of the address.
isNotOrdered	Boolean	0..1	True if the order of the address parts is known otherwise false. While the address parts are always a sequence, the order in which they are presented may or may not be known to be true or important.

Constraints

Type	Name	Specification
no useablePeriod if null	Invariant	inv: isNull implies (useablePeriod.oclIsUndefined or useablePeriod.isNull)