Vital Signs

A chatbot is an AI program that simulates conversation with people, using pre-set phrases and text or audio inputs, and is often used to provide round-the-clock service. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and distinguishes rule-based from generative chatbots, then reviews five sources: a qualitative review of how chatbots change patient-clinician communication, a systematic review in mental health screening, a review of pediatric chatbots, a review of randomized trials on preoperative anxiety, and a randomized trial in urogynecology.

Anti-virus software is a program designed to detect many forms of malware, stop them from infecting computers, and clean systems that are already infected. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, NIST Special Publication 800-83 Revision 1 on how to deploy anti-virus tools, and the HIPAA protection from malicious software specification, then reviews studies of ransomware in hospitals, including a South African laboratory attack, a review of ransomware in trauma centers, and a national analysis of breaches.

A virtual machine, or VM, is an isolated instance of an operating system and its applications running on shared hardware under a hypervisor, so one computer can act as many. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, NIST Special Publication 800-125 on full virtualization and its security concerns, a pediatric research network that deployed VMs to eight centers, and a reference architecture for medical devices that uses hypervisor-based separation.

SSH, or Secure Shell, is a network protocol that gives administrators a secure way to reach a remote computer, along with the utilities that implement it. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, how NIST IR 7966 describes SSH uses and the risks of poorly managed SSH keys, the IETF architecture standard, and a 2025 study of defenses against brute-force attacks on remote access services.

An ontology is a formal specification of the concepts in a knowledge domain and the relationships among them, expressed in a controlled vocabulary that systems can use to share meaning. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and how an ontology differs from a glossary or taxonomy, then reviews four sources: the BioPortal repository of 1,549 ontologies, the Gene Ontology knowledgebase, a purpose-built Eye Disease Ontology, and a six-layer framework for ontology-driven digital health.

Least privilege is the security principle that each user or system should have only the minimum access and authority needed to do its job. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and how it connects to the HIPAA Security Rule’s access control and information access management standards and the Privacy Rule’s minimum necessary standard, then reviews a systematic review of role-based access control in health information systems and a study using machine learning to find suspicious EHR access.

Failover is a backup mode in which the functions of a failed or offline system component are taken over by a secondary component. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, why failover does not remove the need for downtime procedures, and the HIPAA contingency plan standard, then reviews five sources: a hospital analysis of 204 EHR downtime events, a laboratory study of downtime delays, a scoping review of downtime threats, a health system’s quarterly downtime exercises, and a resilience model for downtime planning.

Data provenance is the ability to trace and verify how data was created, how it moved among databases, and how it was altered over its life cycle. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and reviews five sources: a systematic review of provenance in healthcare, a scoping review of provenance in biomedical research, a case on understanding EHR data through system flow mapping, a study of provenance and completeness across three data partners, and an analysis of two Kaggle datasets with no clear provenance.

Care management is a set of activities that ensures each person served has a single approved care plan that is coordinated, not duplicative, and designed for cost-effective care and good outcomes. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and reviews four sources: the Camden Coalition randomized trial, a CareMore randomized trial of complex care management for Medicaid patients, a nurse-led program for multimorbidity, and a trial in a community health center.

An artificial neural network, or ANN, is a computational model based on the structure and function of biological neural networks that learns relationships between inputs and outputs. The HIMSS Dictionary spells it Artificial Neuron Network. This post explains the definition and reviews four sources: a meta-analysis comparing ANN and logistic regression for trauma outcomes, a review in digestive disease diagnosis, a nurse-collected image study of peristomal skin, and a stroke length-of-stay model.

Validation is the process of demonstrating that a system meets its specifications and that requirements for a specific intended use have been fulfilled. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the difference between verification and validation, then reviews four sources: the FDA’s guidance on software validation, a statistical approach to validating legacy data during an EHR conversion, a data validation study of NICU parental presence documentation, and an optimal validation sampling strategy for a multinational HIV study.

Sanitization is the process of removing information from media so that recovery is not possible or feasible. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, NIST Special Publication 800-88 Revision 2 and its clear, purge, and destroy methods, the HIPAA Security Rule’s required standards for disposal and media re-use, a primer on data sanitization and electronic waste, and a different use of the word in genomic data sharing.

OLAP, or online analytical processing, is a category of tools that help people analyze multidimensional queries, often on top of a data warehouse. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and how OLAP differs from transaction processing, then reviews six sources: a scoping review of clinical data warehouses, an OLAP-GIS tool for community health assessment, a national outpatient data warehouse, a community health priority tool, a spatial OLAP application for climate-related health vulnerability, and a transfer system built on an OLAP cube.

JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text format for exchanging data that is easy for people to read and for software to process. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, the two structures at the heart of JSON, and why FHIR resources are commonly written in it, then reviews the IETF standard, the FHIR JSON specification, and studies on JSON-LD, CDA-to-FHIR mapping, wearable data, and SQL on FHIR.

FMEA, or Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, is a systematic, proactive method for examining a process to find where and how it might fail and which failures matter most. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and scoring by severity, occurrence, and detection, then reviews five sources: an in-hospital medication process analysis with 101 failure modes, a critical radiology result project, a systematic review in adaptive radiotherapy, a blood gas template, and a pharmacy drug management pilot.

Data mapping links one data model to another using defined methods so that information keeps its meaning when it moves between systems. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the related term crosswalk, then reviews five sources: a scoping review of FHIR mapping quality across 39 studies, a LOINC mapping of a cohort study’s laboratory dictionary, a wearable data mapping to FHIR, a CDA-to-FHIR mapping in Austria, and the SQL on FHIR specification.

Computer-aided detection, or CAD, combines artificial intelligence and image processing to help radiologists find findings they might otherwise overlook. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, including the related term computer-aided diagnosis, and reviews four sources: a systematic review of CAD in mammography screening, a 2026 meta-analysis of AI across 26 screening studies, a 109-facility study of an AI workflow, and a pediatric CT study of lung nodule CAD.

Advanced analytics is the use of sophisticated techniques, such as machine learning, forecasting, and text mining, to find deeper insights, make predictions, or generate recommendations beyond traditional business intelligence. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and reviews five sources: a six-part operating model for healthcare analytics, a commentary on governance, a paper on equity in primary care, a multicenter pharmacy study across 11 facilities, and a machine learning study of drug diversion across 10 hospitals.

User experience, or UX, covers a person’s perceptions, emotions, and actions before, during, and after using a product or system. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and how UX differs from usability, then reviews five sources: an integrative review of nurses’ EHR experience across six dimensions, five screen design principles tested with medical staff, interviews about an AI sepsis alert, a randomized crossover trial with 36 ICU nurses, and a pilot of ambient AI scribes in urology.

TKIP, the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol, is a wireless security protocol from IEEE 802.11i built to strengthen WEP on existing hardware. This post explains what the HIMSS Dictionary says, what NIST Special Publication 800-97 reports about TKIP’s features and weaknesses, why NIST requires CCMP for federal wireless networks, and how the HIPAA transmission security standard applies to hospital Wi-Fi.