Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics

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Glossary of Terms

Term	Abbr.	Description

Ancestor		The higher level Concept in a hierarchical relationship. Note that ancestors and descendants can be many levels apart from each other.
Ambulatory Payment Classification	APC	The Ambulatory Payment Classifications is used as a method of paying for outpatient services for the Medicare program, which is analogous to the DRGs for inpatient services.
Average Wholesale Price	AWP	The price manufacturers set for prescription drugs to be purchased at the wholesale level to pharmacies and healthcare provider.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention	CDC	The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services. It works to protect public health and safety by providing information to enhance health decisions.
Common Data Model	CDM	The CDM intends to facilitate observational analyses of disparate healthcare databases. The CDM defines table structures for each of the data entities (e.g., Persons, Visit Occurrence, Drug Exposure, Condition Occurrence, Observation, Procedure Occurrence, etc.). It includes observational data elements that are relevant to identifying exposure to various treatments and defining condition occurrence. The CDM includes both the Standardized Vocabularies of terms and the entity domain tables.
Concept		A concept is the basic unit of information. Concepts may be grouped into a given domain. A concept is a unique term that has a unique and static identifier/name, belongs to a domain, and may exist in relation to other concepts. The vertical relationships consist of “is a” statements that form a logical hierarchy. In general, concepts above a given concept are referred to as ancestors and those below as descendants.
Conceptual Data Model		A conceptual data model is a map of concepts and their relationships. This describes the semantics of an organization and represents a series of assertions about its nature. Specifically, it describes the things of significance to an organization (entity classes), about which it is inclined to collect information, and characteristics of (attributes) and associations between pairs of those things of significance (relationships).
Current Procedural Terminology, 4th edition	CPT-4	A terminology that is maintained by the American Medical Association (AMA). It is used by hospitals for Medicare hospital outpatient and by physicians for outpatient services.
Data mapping		It is the data element mappings between two distinct data models, terminologies, or concepts. Data mapping is the process of creating data element mappings between two distinct data models. Data mapping is used as a first step for a wide variety of data integration tasks.
Demographics		Demographics refer to selected characteristics of persons. Demographics may include data such as race, age, sex, date of birth, location, etc.
Descendant		The lower level Concept in a hierarchical relationship. Note that ancestors and descendants can be many levels apart from each other.
Design Principle		An organized arrangement of one or more elements or principles for a purpose. It identifies core principles and best practices to assist developers to produce software. Thoroughly understanding the goals of stakeholders and designing systems with those goals in mind are the best approaches to successfully deliver results.
Diagnosis-Related Group	DRG	The Diagnosis-related Groups is used as a method of paying for inpatient services for the Medicare program, which is analogous to the APCs for outpatient services.
Electronic Health Record	EHR	Electronic health record refers to an individual person's medical record in digital format. It may be made up of electronic medical records from many locations and/or sources. The EHR is a longitudinal electronic record of person health information generated by one or more encounters in any care delivery setting. Included in this information are person demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports.
Electronic Medical Record	EMR	An electronic medical record is a computerized medical record created in an organization that delivers care, such as a hospital or outpatient setting. Electronic medical records tend to be a part of a local stand-alone health information system that allows storage, retrieval and manipulation of records. This document will reference EHR moving forward even if specific data source might internally use EMR definition.
Extract Transform Load	ETL	Process of getting data out of one data store (Extract), modifying it (Transform), and inserting it into a different data store (Load).
Generic Product Identifier	GPI	A proprietary unique identifier for a drug used by the commercial Medi-Span® formulary database.
Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System	HCPCS	HCPCS Level I codes are managed by the AMA (licensing fees apply). The HCPCS Level II codes are managed by CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). The Level II codes include: alphanumeric HCPCS procedure and modifier codes, their long and short descriptions, and applicable Medicare administrative, coverage, and pricing data. These codes are used for Medicare outpatient services.
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act	HIPAA	A federal law that was designed to allow portability of health insurance between jobs. In addition, it required the creation of a federal law to protect personally identifiable health information; if that did not occur by a specific date (which it did not), HIPAA directed the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to issue federal regulations with the same purpose. DHHS has issued HIPAA privacy regulations (the HIPAA Privacy Rule) as well as other regulations under HIPAA.
Health Level Seven	HL7	HL7 is a global not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. HL7 specifications primarily draw upon codes and vocabularies from a variety of sources.
International Classification of Disease, 9th Revision, Clinical Modifications	ICD-9-CM
Or
ICD-9	The official system of assigning codes to diagnoses and procedures associated with hospital utilization in the United States.
Logical Data Model		Logical data models are graphical representation of the business requirements. They describe the things of importance to an organization and how they relate to one another, as well as business definitions and examples. The logical data model can be validated and approved by a business representative, and can be the basis of physical database design.
Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes	LOINC	Universal code names and identifiers to medical terminology related to the Electronic Health Record and assists in the electronic exchange and gathering of clinical results (such as laboratory tests, clinical observations, outcomes management and research).
Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities	MedDRA	MedDRA is a clinically-validated international medical terminology used by regulatory authorities and the regulated biopharmaceutical industry. The terminology is used through the entire regulatory process, from pre-marketing to post-marketing, and for data entry, retrieval, evaluation, and presentation.
National Drug Codes	NDC	Unique identifiers assigned to individual drugs. NDCs are used primarily as an inventory code and for prescriptions.
National Drug File - Reference Terminology	NDF-RT	A nonproprietary drug reference terminology that includes drug knowledge and classifies drugs, most notably by mechanism of action and physiologic effect.
Primary Care Provider	PCP	A health care provider designated as responsible to provide general medical care to a patient, including evaluation and treatment as well as referral to specialists.
Protected Health Information	PHI	Protected health information under HIPAA includes any individually identifiable health information. Identifiable refers not only to data that is explicitly linked to a particular individual (that's identified information). It also includes health information with data items which reasonably could be expected to allow individual identification. De-identified information is that from which all potentially identifying information has been removed.
RxNorm		A standardized nomenclature for clinical drugs and drug delivery devices is produced by the National Library of Medicine. In RxNorm, the name of a clinical drug combines its ingredients, strengths, and/or form.
RxNorm provides normalized names for clinical drugs and links its names to many of the drug vocabularies commonly used in pharmacy management and drug interaction software, including those of First DataBank, Micromedix, MediSpan, Gold Standard Alchemy, and Multum. By providing links between these vocabularies, RxNorm can mediate messages between systems not using the same software and vocabulary.
Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms	SNOMED-CT®	SNOMED-CT is one of a suite of designated standards for use in U.S. Federal Government systems for the electronic exchange of clinical health information, and is also a required standard in interoperability specifications of the U.S. Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel. SNOMED-CT is also being implemented internationally as a standard within other IHTSDO Member countries.
Terminology		Technical or special terms used in a business or special subject area.
Vocabulary		A computerized list (as of items of data or words) used for reference (as for information retrieval or word processing).

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