Vital Signs

The Reference Information Model, or RIM, is the shared information model from which HL7 Version 3 standards draw their content. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary entry and HL7’s own description, then reviews five sources: two 2006 papers that argue over whether the RIM is coherent, the 2001 paper that tied the Clinical Document Architecture to it, an early data warehouse mapping, and a 2022 Chinese metadata project that referenced it.

The Continuity of Care Maturity Model (CCMM) is a HIMSS framework that rates how well patient care is coordinated across sites, providers, and care settings, using eight stages from 0 to 7. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary entry and the stages, then reviews what four studies show, including a Taiwanese pilot that reported reaching Stage 7 and two studies of the sibling EMRAM model that reached different conclusions.

A URL, or uniform resource locator, is the address that tells software where a web resource is and how to reach it. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the standard that defines it, then reviews five sources: three studies of links that stop working, a model for detecting malicious URLs, and a study of 511 hospitals’ patient portals that found 29.4 percent offered login pages only in English.

An interface terminology is the vocabulary clinicians use while documenting, built so everyday wording can be stored as structured data. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews five sources: a decade of experience with a structured lexicon at Vanderbilt, a model for integrating three kinds of terminology, a test showing 24 to 27 percent agreement between two mapping routes, a laboratory alignment to LOINC, and a mapping of 467 nursing interventions to SNOMED CT.

The DSM is the American Psychiatric Association manual that clinicians and researchers use to diagnose and classify mental disorders. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and how DSM diagnoses connect to ICD-10-CM codes in health records, then reviews five studies: a comparison of 103 diagnoses in ICD-11 and DSM-5, a PTSD prevalence comparison, a gaming disorder criteria comparison, a pediatric aggression code validation, and a Taiwan claims code study.

Healthcare terminology is a collective term for the range from code sets and classifications to nomenclatures and structured vocabularies. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews five studies: a Korean survey of 325 professionals that found low knowledge of SNOMED CT and LOINC, a nursing study that mapped 1,271 patient education titles to SNOMED CT with 3.9 percent unmapped, a Dutch framework for maintaining terminologies, a study of junior learners and jargon, and a review of evidence-based healthcare terms.

A health information organization (HIO) is the body that governs how patient data move between healthcare organizations under national standards. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the difference between an HIO and an HIE, then reviews five studies: a 2025 national hospital survey linking HIO participation to more exchange activity, a 2024 census of 135 HIOs in which 86 percent of responding HIOs were connected to a public health agency, a 2023 study of breach risk, a 2026 review of school nursing access, and a 2018 study of market conditions.

GELLO, short for Guideline Expression Language, Object Oriented, is an HL7 standard language for querying data and expressing rules in clinical decision support, built on an object-oriented model. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews six sources: the HL7 GELLO product brief, a report on an OCL-compliant GELLO engine, a GELLO-based diabetes care system deployed in China, a standardized adverse drug event knowledge base, a report on the Arden Syntax standard and plans to add GELLO, and a 2021 comparison of Arden Syntax and Clinical Quality Language.

An acquisition modality is a system that captures medical images, waveforms, or measurements while the patient or specimen is present, such as a CT scanner, a specimen microscope, or a hemodynamic monitoring system. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews six sources: the original DICOM modality worklist report, a study of selection errors it can introduce, a 2026 ultrasound incident analysis, a dermoscopy integration project, a portable radiography timing study of 190 exams, and a 2025 DICOM whole-slide imaging Connectathon with 32 implementers.

A transaction standard specifies the format of the messages that a system sends or receives, not how information is stored inside the system. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the HIPAA regulatory definitions of standard transaction, format, data content, and operating rules, then reviews five sources: the HHS interim final rule on operating rules, an overview of HIPAA administrative simplification, a synthetic X12 837 claims generator for education, a national survey of 1,147 providers on electronic prior authorization, and an evaluation of the Fast Prior Authorization Technology Highway.

The ISO/IEEE 11073 standards are a family of health informatics and medical device communication standards that provide real-time plug-and-play interoperability and help exchange vital signs and device data acquired at the point of care. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews five sources: a standards-based e-health solution implemented in 26 environments in Spain, an extension of the personal health device standards to a treadmill, a Bluetooth implementation for pulse oximeter and ECG devices, a test of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 for cable-free surgical navigation, and a time-sensitive networking approach to bounded latency in operating room networks.

REST, or representational state transfer, is an architectural style for distributed systems such as the World Wide Web, and it has become a leading design model for web services, including those used in health IT. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the constraints behind the style, then reviews four sources: Roy Fielding’s dissertation that defined REST, the HL7 FHIR RESTful API, a benchmark comparing REST queries to big data engines on 71 million FHIR resources, and a RESTful API for PROMIS measures at three medical centers.

CQL, or Clinical Quality Language, is an HL7 authoring language meant to be readable by people while structured enough for computers to process, and it supports efforts to align eCQM and decision support standards. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and the HL7 specification, then reviews four studies: 39 CQL libraries built from Taiwan’s national quality indicators, a combined large language model and CQL approach to myocarditis surveillance, an LLM-in-the-loop CQL engine, and an open source FHIR server with an embedded CQL engine.

The Quality Data Model, or QDM, is an information model that defines the concepts used in quality of care, with the aim of letting EHR data be used automatically. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and reviews five sources: the eCQI Resource Center page on QDM versions, a method for converting textual diagnostic criteria into QDM, an approach to running QDM algorithms on the i2b2 platform, a prototype that executed a QDM-based measure at two universities, and a study that ran nine eCQMs for more than a million patients.

An implementation guide is a document that explains how to use a standard correctly for a specific purpose; the HIMSS Dictionary also lists a second meaning for installation and maintenance methods for software and hardware. This post explains both meanings and how HL7 FHIR defines an implementation guide, then reviews four sources: a scoping review of how FHIR implementation guides are created, a prenatal monitoring model built on an implementation guide, a Japanese survey that mapped CT and MRI safety items to FHIR and JP Core, and a roadmap that builds on the International Patient Summary guide.

Application integration, sometimes called enterprise application integration or EAI, is the process of bringing data or a function from one application program together with that of another, often through middleware. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition, then reviews four sources: a FHIR-based inpatient rounding list integrated into a commercial EHR, a drug interaction app that used a full stack of HL7 standards, a vendor-neutral middleware framework for Ontario primary care, and an open-source integration engine for federated semantic interoperability.

Immunization information systems are confidential, population-based, computerized databases that record immunization doses given by participating providers to people living in a defined geographic area. This post explains the HIMSS Dictionary definition and how HL7 FHIR models immunizations, then reviews five sources: studies of EHR and IIS interoperability in Michigan and Minnesota, a probabilistic linkage method for duplicate temporary-name records, interjurisdictional data exchange among three states, and a decision support pilot for HPV vaccination in pharmacies.

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.

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.

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.