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Work Group Vocabulary

Ballot Standards Status : Informative

4.0 Terminology Module

4.0.1 Introduction

The Terminology Module provides an overview and guide to the FHIR resources, operations, coded data types and externally-defined standard and FHIR-defined terminologies that are used for representing and communicating coded, structured data in the FHIR core specification and profiles. Collectively, these capabilities are used to provide the terminology service functionality required for supporting the use of coded data in FHIR resources throughout the specification as described in the other modules.

The terminology resources primary terminology-related structures and their relationships are shown below:

Example: Condition profile with Condition.code slice bound to "SNOMED CT fracture codes" value set

[Note: The ElementDefinition type (shown with a dotted box) is described elsewhere in the specification in the Foundation and Conformance modules. modules.]

4.0.2 Index

The Terminology Module covers the following:

Resources

CodeSystem ValueSet

ConceptMap NamingSystem

ExpansionProfile TerminologyCapabilities

Terminology Service

Terminology Service Documentation

Operations

CodeSystem $lookup $validate-code $subsumes $compose $find-matches

ValueSet $expand $validate-code

ConceptMap $translate $closure

Coded Data Types

code

Coding

CodeableConcept

Documentation

Using Codes in Resources Code Systems Defined/Referenced in FHIR Value Sets Defined in FHIR

Mappings (FHIR-defined) Between Related Value Set Concepts Known Identifier Systems

4.0.3 Security and Privacy

For security considerations for terminology services, see the Terminology Service page Security section . For more general considerations, see the Security and Privacy module .

4.0.4 Common Use Cases

• Create or reference a code system
• Create or reference a value set
• Record data using pre-coordinated codes
• Record data using post-coordinated expressions
• Record data using multiple local or standard code systems (translations)
• Expand a value set
• Validate a code
• Look up a display term for a code
• Translate a code from one value set to another
• Maintain a client-side transitive closure table on subsumption relationships
• Test subsumption between concepts
• For a set of property/concept pairs, return the set of concepts for the requested properties
• Map data between different terminologies
• Declare the capabilities of a terminology service

4.0.5 Developmental Development Roadmap

A subset of the The following terminology resources has have been tested and are being used in production tooling, tooling and as such have reached a maturity level where changes become less likely. These are: now are normative or are expected soon to progress to normative.

• ValueSet   3 N
• CodeSystem N
• ConceptMap   2 3

Other terminology resources are still under development: in earlier stages of development. We intend to continue to develop and test these resources and advance them through the Maturity Levels at Connectathons and elsewhere.

• NamingSystem   1 CodeSystem   0
• ExpansionProfile TerminologyCapabilities   0

Over the next 18 months, we will continue to advance the resources through the Maturity Levels through further development and testing. We anticipate more widespread implementation of NamingSystem, CodeSystem and ExpansionProfile and testing in Connectathons and with implementation experience.