Glossary
Glossary of Terms, Acronyms, and Abbreviations
| Term/Acronym/Abbreviation | Description |
|---|---|
| Application Programming Interface (API) | A set of standard software interrupts, calls, functions, and data formats that can be used by an application program to access network services, devices, applications, or operating systems. |
| Content validation | Validation to confirm that the content in the record meets the classification, business, and codification rules (e.g. gender values, dispense date rules, Drug Identification Number/Product Identification Number). |
| Digital Health Asset | A product or service that is selected, developed or used by a health information custodian, and enables the custodian to use electronic means to collect, use, modify, disclose, transmit, retain or dispose of personal health information to provide care or assist in the provision of care. |
| HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources Standard (HL7 FHIR®) | A standard for exhanging healthcare information electronically that defines a set of "Resources" that represent granular clinical concepts. The resources can be managed in isolation, or aggregated into complex documents. Technically, FHIR is designed for the web; the resources are based on simple Extensible Markup Language (XML) or JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) structures, with an http-based RESTful protocol where each resource has predictable Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Where possible, open internet standards are used for data representation. |
| Health Information Custodian (HIC) | A person or organization that has custody or control of personal health information for the purpose of health care or other health-related duties. Examples include physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories and the Ministry of Health. |
| Health Information System | Any system that captures, stores, manages, or transmits information related to the health of individuals or activities of organizations that work within the health sector. |
| Health Level Seven (HL7®) | A set of international standards used to move clinical and administrative health data between applications. The application layer, or "layer 7" in the Open Systems Interconnection paradigm, is the focus of the HL7 standards. |
| Health Network System (HNS) | A provincial computer network that connects the ministry and pharmacies in Ontario. It is employed in the Ontario Drug Benefit (ODB) Program to handle claim processing. Additionally, it stops individuals from abusing the ODB program. |
| Hospital | Any institution, building or other premises or place that is established for the purposes of the treatment of patients and that is approved under this Act as a public hospital. |
| Hospital Information System | A comprehensive, knowledge-based system used in a hospital setting, capable of providing information to all who need it to make sound decisions about health. |
| Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) | A communication link protocol used by web servers and browsers to transfer/exchange HTML documents or files (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) over the Internet. |
| Implementation Guide (IG) | A document explaining the proper use of a standard for a specific purpose. |
| Implementer(s) | Entities responsible for carrying out the adoption of Implementation Guide (iGuides). |
| Informational Annotation | An informational message has been generated during the validation process, however the dispense or administration record is still valid for disclosure to clinicians (e.g., Newborn DOB detected). |
| Interoperability Specification | A business or technical requirement established by the Agency that applies to a digital health asset or to a digital health asset’s interaction with other digital health assets, and that may include, without being limited to, a requirement related to:
|
| JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) | A text format that is completely language independent but uses conventions that are familiar to programmers of the C-family of languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Python, and many others. These properties make JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) an ideal data-interchange language. |
| Ministry of Health (MOH) | The Ontario government ministry in charge of overseeing the province's healthcare system. Formerly known as Ministry of Health and Long Term Care (MOHLTC). |
| Medical Record Number (MRN) | A unique number assigned by a facility (e.g. hospital, community pharmacy) to identify an individual. The medical record number is organization specific. |
| Object Identifier (OID) | An identifier mechanism standardized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) for naming any object, concept, or "thing" with a globally unambiguous persistent name. |
| Pan-Canadian HALO | A Standardized framework developed to enable easier integration of web applications with EMR and POS solutions. |
| Personal Health Information (PHI) | Identifying information about an individual, whether oral or recorded if the information Relates to the individual’s physical or mental condition, including family medical history, provision of health care to the individual, is a plan of service for the individual, payments, or eligibility for health care or for coverage for health care, donation of any body part or bodily substance or is derived from the testing or examination of any such body part or bodily substance, is the individual’s health number or identifies a health care provider or a substitute decision-maker for the individual. “Identifying information” includes information that identifies an individual or for which it is reasonably foreseeable that it could be used, either alone or with other information, to identify an individual. |
| Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) | An Ontario health privacy law. It establishes rules for the management of Personal Health Information and the protection of the confidentiality of that information, while facilitating the effective delivery of healthcare services. |
| Product Identification Number (PIN) | Series of numerical or alphanumerical digits that are used to identify a specific product. |
| Provider Application | Provider applications include point-of-service systems supporting clinical workflow for Ontario’s healthcare providers. |
| Prescribed Organization (PO) | An organization that has the power and the duty to develop and maintain the electronic health record (EHR) in accordance with Part V.1 of Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) and the regulations made thereunder. |
| Point of Service (PoS) | A software application used by health information custodians for viewing or managing personal health information (PHI). Common PoS systems include, but are not limited to, provincial clinical viewers, health information system (HIS) and primary care electronic medical records (EMRs). |
| Provincial Client Registry (PCR) | The definitive source for a health care client’s identity, facilitating the unique, accurate and reliable identification of individual clients and others who receive care in Ontario, across the disciplines in the health care sector. It contains demographic and identification cross-reference data for health care clients registered in one or more patient identifier domains for which eHealth Ontario, as a result of policy/program/IT decisions, has established a data sharing agreement with the respective organizations. The PCR is fed by multiple data sources, including the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Registered Persons Data Base hospital sites tracking admissions, discharges, and transfers, and other systems that participate in health care services. |
| Publication/Subscription (Pub/Sub) | A FHIR Standard mechanism that allows systems to subscribe to real-time notifications about changes to FHIR resources. |
| SMART on FHIR Accelerator (SOFA) | manages interactions on behalf of point of care systems using centralized jurisdictional services like identity management, context management, and subscriptions, thereby extending SMART on FHIR capabilities to non-compliant systems. |
| Structural validation | A process to confirm that a record being submitted meet the technical rules of the message format (e.g., Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources JavaScript Object Notation/Extensible Markup Language (FHIR JSON/XML) structure or HL7 v.2 and the presence of mandatory fields). |
| Unique Provider Identifier number (UPI) | A unique number or code used for the purpose of identifying a healthcare provider. |
| Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) | The sequence of characters that identifies a logical or physical resource. Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is an example of a type of URI. |
| Uniform Resource Locator (URL) | A method to locate a resource on the web. It contains the name of the protocol to be used to access the resource and the resource name |
| Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) | An octet string of 16 octets (128 bits) used to reliably identifying very persistent objects across a network, particularly (but not necessarily) as part of an object identifier (OID) value, or in a Uniform Resource Name (URN). |
| Warning Annotation | A commentary generated when a validation rule determined that a message should be considered or analyzed, however the dispense or administration record is still invalid for transmission to clinicians (e.g., Date of Birth (DoB) has the day and month transposed). |
| Extensible Markup Language (XML) | A simplified subset of standard generalized markup language, capable of describing many different kinds of data. |