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9 Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations

Term Description
.NET Framework The core programming model for using Windows as an application server. Offers native support for database connectivity and Web Services.
Bus Common conduit for message based communication between services.
CDX Clinical Data Exchange: A community utility that allows interchange of healthcare information between diverse medical systems.
ebXML Electronic Business XML: Standard messaging notation for business-to-business electronic business. Expected to supplant traditional ASC X12 EDI in future.
EHR Electronic Health Record: Clinical data collected in the course of delivering patient care, available in discrete digital form allowing access to individual data elements.
FTP File Transfer Protocol: Protocol for exchanging files over the Internet.
HL7 ‘Health Level 7’ (Refers to the seven layer network model popularized by ISO): Message format standards used for exchange of data between healthcare systems.
HL7 RIM HL7 Reference Information Model: Object model used in deriving new HL7 (Version 3) message formats.
Interoperability The ability of two or more systems (or components) to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged.
LOINC ‘Logical Observation Identifier Name Codes’: Standard code set covering medical terms, procedures and diagnoses maintained by Regenstrief.
Metadata Data about data. Technical metadata describes how and when the data was collected, transformed and should be used. Business metadata provides the business meanings of the data.
MIME Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions: Standard format for non ASCII content sent over the Internet mail system.
MPI Master Patient Index (also called Master Person Index by some vendors): An electronic index that enables lookup of patient data distributed across multiple systems, to provide an aggregated view of patient’s EHR.
Prototype A visual, functional model of the proposed software system. A prototype is developed for various reasons. The primary purposes of the RLS prototype are to validate software architecture concepts and to demonstrate the working of a software product to stakeholders.
Reference Implementation A tool to demonstrate the practical feasibility of software standard specifications, or application programming interfaces (API).
RLS Record Locator Service: An information service that locates patient records across systems that subscribe to the service.
RxNORM Clinical drug nomenclature produced by NLM, in consultation with FDA, VA, and the HL7 standards development organization. RxNorm provides standard names for clinical drugs and for dose forms as administered.
SAML Security Assertions Markup Language: An XML framework for communicating security information (authentication, authorization, other attributes) between systems. SAML is independent of the security protocol used (e.g. PKI, LDAP, Kerberos, etc.) and promotes interoperability between disparate systems.
Semantic Interoperability Property of data exchange that ensures that the receiver of data understands what the sender ‘meant’ (contrast with mere ‘syntactic’ interoperability).
Service Application system with a standard network callable interface.
Service Oriented Architecture An application architecture comprising components, whose interface descriptions can be published, discovered and invoked. Components are said to be loosely coupled in that they have no knowledge of each other except for their respective interfaces and communicate with each other through messages.
W3C definition: A set of components which can be invoked, and whose interface descriptions can be published and discovered.
S/MIME Secure MIME: Version of the basic MIME protocol that supports encrypted messages based on RSA’s public key encryption technology.
SNOMED-CT Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms: Standard code set covering medical terms, procedures and diagnoses maintained by College of American Pathologists.
SOAP Acronym, originally, for Simple Object Access Protocol; no longer considered an acronym. Lightweight XML based protocol for exchanging information in Web service based implementations. Primarily specifies the XML ‘envelope’ for a message.
SSL Secure Sockets Layer: Protocol used to communicate private (encrypted) data over the Internet.
UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration: Mechanism for web service providers to advertise services and consumers of services to locate them.
UML Unified Modeling Language: general purpose language for specifying and visualizing software systems. Favored for object-oriented software development.
URI Universal Resource Identifier: The standard for naming and addressing resources on the Internet. The commonly known URL (Universal Resource Locator) is a form of URI.
Vocabulary Domain HL7 term for standardized set of values for coded attributes used in healthcare information messages; e.g. ObservationMethod, Race, VaccineType.
Web Services An application that is identified by an URI, and invoked via the Internet, using data exchange notations based on XML. By emphasizing simplicity and open standards, disparate applications can securely interoperate without knowing internal details of each other.
W3C definition: “A Web service is a software system identified by a URI [RFC 2396], whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition, using XML based messages conveyed by Internet protocols.”
WSDL Web Services Description Language: standard XML based specification to describe the interface to a Web Service. Machine-interpretable standard form for describing the operation of a web service, represents the ‘contract’ that the Web Service honors with any requestor.
WS-Security Specification that encompasses all XML security standards related to SOAP messaging. Covers how security tokens are to be generated for SOAP message headers, how XML messages are signed and encrypted, etc.
XML eXtensible Markup Language: Common notation used to represent data sent from one system to another. XML data files (or messages) use clear text and are ‘self-describing’ enabling human as well as machine understanding. E.g. HTML notation is based (loosely) on XML.