Glossary
The WP2 team together with the LC will agree on key concepts including references to the relevant sources and acronyms to be published in a ‘public glossary’ via the project’s website. The aim of the public glossary is to ensure a public understanding of Xt-EHR’s results/work available from the project’s website.
Concept preferred name
Acronym/ Synonym
Definition
Definition Source
Note
Big Data in Health
Conformity, conformance
Conformity Assessment Scheme
Continuity of Care
Compliance
Cross-Border Healthcare
Digital Health
Digital health literacy (or eHealth literacy)
Big Data in Health refers to large routinely or automatically collected datasets, which are electronically captured and stored. It is reusable in the sense of multipurpose data and comprises the fusion and connection of existing databases for the purpose of improving health and health system performance. It does not refer to data collected for a specific study.
European Commission
Fulfilment of a product, process, or service of specified requirements
A framework that allows eHealth solutions to be tested for their conformity with a selected set of eHealth standards and profiles
Efficient, effective, ethical care delivered through interaction, integration, co-ordination and sharing of information between different healthcare actors over time.
ISO/DIS 27269:2024, EN ISO/HL7 10781:2023
EURO-CAS
ISO/FDIS 27269
Conformity in fulfilling official such as regulatory requirements
Merriam-Webster dictionary, refined
ISO 37301 refinements: outcome of meeting all the organization’s obligations set by legislation and government agencies; adherence of a product, service, or process to legal and regulatory requirements, fulfilling legislative and contractual requirements.
‘Cross-border healthcare’ means healthcare provided or prescribed in a Member State other than the Member State of affiiation;
Digital health is the field of knowledge and practice associated with the development and use of digital technologies to improve health. Digital health expands the concept of eHealth to include digital consumers, with a wider range of smart devices and connected equipment. The following areas are commonly understood as being part of, or related to, digital health: artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, health data, health information systems, the infodemic, the Internet of Things, interoperability and telemedicine.
Digital health literacy is the ability to search for, access, understand, appraise, validate, and apply online health information, and to formulate and express questions, opinion, thoughts, or feelings when using digital devices.” This concept relates strongly to the frequency with which people use differ-ent health resources from digital sources and resources such as online video consultations, digital per-sonal health records, social media, health related apps, etc.
Discharge Letter
eHealth
Discharge Report, hospital discharge report, hospital discharge summary
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Electronic health data related to a healthcare encounter or episode of care and including essential information about admission, treatment and discharge of a natural person.
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Hospital discharge summaries serve as the primary documents communicating a patient’s care plan to the post-hospital care team. Often, the discharge summary is the only form of communication that accompanies the patient to the next setting of care. It is a report which encompasses a summary of events occurred during a hospital encounter usually manifesting as a hospital admission, stay and discharge, and including communication of a care plan. For a more detailed list of elements, please refer to the dataset (Chapter 4).
1) eHealth is the use of ICT in health products, services and processes combined with organisational change in healthcare systems and new skills, in order to improve health of citizens, efficiency and productivity in healthcare delivery, and the economic and social value of health.
2) WHO definition: cost-effective and secure use of information and communications technologies in support of health and health-related fields, including health-care services, health surveillance, health literature, and health education, knowledge and research.
Electronic Health Record
EHR
Electronic health record means a collection of electronic health data related to a natural person and collected in the health system, processed for healthcare purposes.
Electronic Health Record System
EHR System
EHR system (electronic health record system) means any system where the appliance or software allows to store, intermediate, export, import, convert, edit or view personal electronic health data that belongs to the priority categories of personal electronic health data as referred to in Article 5(1) of this Regulation and is intended by the manufacturer to be used by healthcare providers in providing patient care or by patient to access to their health data;
Electronic Identification
eID
The process of using person identification data in electronic form uniquely representing either a natural or legal person, or a natural person representing a legal person.
Electronic Prescription
ePrescription
(1) A medicinal prescription issued and transmitted electronically.
(2) Medical prescription, provided in electronic format: "A prescription is understood as a set of data like drug ID, drug name, strength, form, dosage, indication or as a list of drugs together covering the patients current medication. The data set might differ slightly between the countries.“ In the context of eHealth DSI, this definition of ePrescription data will apply. However, it is not excluded that the use of the infrastructure and the service developed in eHealth DSI might be afterwards extended to handle ePrescription data different from medicinal prescriptions.
ePrescription service
The concept of the ePrescription service is understood as the ordering of a prescription in software, the electronic transmission of that prescription from the Prescription provider to a Dispense provider, the electronic dispensing of the medicine and the electronic transmission of the dispensed medicine information from the dispenser provider to the prescription provider.
The ePrescription service is made up of electronic prescribing and electronic dispensing:
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ePrescribing is defined as prescribing of medicines in software by a health care professional legally authorized to do so, for dispensing once it has been
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electronically transmitted, at the pharmacy.
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eDispensing is defined as the act of electronically retrieving a prescription and giving out the medicine to the patient as indicated in the corresponding ePrescription. Once the medicine is dispensed, the dispenser shall report via software the information about the dispensed medicine(s).
2) Kind AJH, Smith MA. Documentation of Mandated Discharge Summary Components in Transitions from Acute to Subacute Care. In: Henriksen K, Battles JB, Keyes MA, et al., editors. Advances in Patient Safety:
New Directions and Alternative Approaches (Vol. 2: Culture and Redesign). Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2008 Aug. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK43715/
Source (1): Commission Recommendation 2008/594/EC on cross-border interoperability of electronic health records - Point 3(f), PS/eP guidelines
Source (2): Identity Management in MyHealth@EU
European Electronic Health Record Exchange Format
EEHRxF
The Commission Recommendation on a European Electronic Health Record exchange format of 6. February 2019 sets out a framework for the development of a European electronic health record exchange format in order to achieve secure, interoperable, cross-border access to, and exchange of, electronic health data in the Union.
European Health Data Space
EHDS
The creation of a European Data Space is one of the priorities of the Commission 2019-2025, including the health sector. In the Communication on “A European strategy for data” it states that the Commission will support the establishment of nine common European data spaces with one of them being the Common European health data space, which is essential for advances in preventing, detecting and curing diseases as well as for informed, evidence-based decisions to improve the accessibility, effectiveness and sustainability of the healthcare systems. It is a health-specific data sharing framework establishing clear rules, common standards and practices, digital infrastructures and a governance framework for the use of electronic health data by patients and for research, innovation, policy making, patient safety, statistics or regulatory purposes.
Functional profile
Subset of comprehensive list of functional and data requirements reflecting the purpose of certain EHR systems or a specific healthcare delivery setting.
EN ISO/HL7 10781:2023, adapted
One system may conform to several functional profiles
Healthcare
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Care activities, services, management or supplies related to the health of an individual.
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Healthcare means health services provided by health professionals to patients to assess, maintain or restore their state of health, including the prescription, dispensation and provision of medicinal products and medical devices.
Note 1: Includes any: a) preventative, diagnostic, therapeutic, rehabilitative, maintenance, or palliative care, counselling, service, or procedure with respect to the physical or mental condition, or functional status, of a patient or affecting the structure or function of the body; b) sale or dispensing of a drug, device, equipment, or other item pursuant to a prescription; or c) procurement or banking of blood, sperm, organs, or any other tissue for administration to patients.
Note 2: Healthcare may also include the management of clinical knowledge.
Health Professional
Health professional means a doctor of medicine, a nurse responsible for general care, a dental practitioner, a midwife or a pharmacist within the meaning of Directive 2005/36/EC, or another professional exercising activities in the healthcare sector which are restricted to a regulated profession as defined in Article 3(1)(a) of Directive 2005/36/EC, or a person considered to be a health professional according to the legislation of the Member State of treatment.
Healthcare Provider
care provider,
health provider,
health service provider,
healthcare service provider
Definition 1: Healthcare actor that is able to be assigned one or more care period mandates
Definition 2: ‘healthcare provider’ means any natural or legal person or any other entity legally providing healthcare on the territory of a Member State;
Source: Directive 2011/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 on the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare.
Notes Definition 1:
Note 1: Healthcare Provider is described in the Attribute Collection HEALTHCARE PROVIDER
Note 2: The personnel of a healthcare organization that is a healthcare provider may include both healthcare professionals and others which participate in the provision of healthcare.
Note 3: According to the definition in ISO 13940:2015, organizations solely responsible for the funding, payment, or reimbursement of healthcare provision are not healthcare providers; for the purpose of this International Standard they are considered as healthcare third parties.
Imaging Report
An imaging report reflects the observations and interpretations of one or more imaging studies. It usually contains elements such as the reason why the study is requested, relevant contextual medical information, the used modality and its settings, procedures and body localisations that were used, a description of the observations and findings, exposure information, conclusion and advice.
Imaging Study
An imaging study comprises a set of objects, including images and other objects, that were made for a specific purpose and usually in response to a request from a healthcare provider. The Imaging Study does not include the Imaging Report as defined in this guideline.
International Patient Summary Data Set
IPS Data Set
IPS Dataset
Minimal, non-exhaustive set of data elements required for the international patient summary.
Note 1: ‘Minimal’ and ‘Non-exhaustive’ criteria are derived from the eHN Guideline for the patient summary.
Note 2: ‘Minimal’ reflects the ideas of ‘summary’ and the need to be concise, but also alludes to the existence of a core set of data elements that all health care professionals can use; it is intended to be a speciality agnostic and condition independent set. It does not imply that all the items in the data set will be used in every summary. It is also possible to refine the extract from a record
such that the content of the summary is more relevant to a particular condition (e.g. asthma) but no asthma-specific elements will be specified in this standard. The IPS Document or IPS can be extended by non-IPS standard condition-specific data.
Note 3 to entry: ‘Non-exhaustive’ recognizes that the ideal data set is not closed, and is likely to be extended, not just in terms of requirement evolution, but also pragmatically in instances of use. However, such data are outside the scope of this current standard until review.
Note 4 to entry: The initial focus of use for IPS is unscheduled care but the IPS can also be used within scheduled care scenarios; scheduled care or planned care, would probably have access to the full EHR and provide a more extensive set of data but would also include the IPS Data Set elements.
Interoperability
Interoperability’ means the ability of organisations as well as software applications or devices from the same manufacturer or different manufacturers to interact, involving the exchange of information and knowledge without changing the content of the data between these organisations, software applications or devices, through the processes they support.
Member State of affiliation
‘Member State of affiliation’ means:
(i), for persons referred to in point (b)(i), the Member State that is competent to grant to the insured person a prior authorisation to receive appropriate treatment outside the Member State of residence according to Regulations (EC) No 883/2004 and (EC) No 987/2009;
(ii), for persons referred to in point (b)(ii), the Member State that is competent to grant to the insured person a prior authorisation to receive appropriate treatment in another Member State according to Regulation (EC) No 859/2003 or Regulation (EU) No 1231/2010. If no Member State is competent according to those Regulations, the Member State of affiliation shall be the Member State where the person is insured or has the rights to sickness benefits according to the legislation of that Member State.
Member State of treatment
‘Member State of treatment’ means the Member State on whose territory healthcare is actually provided to the patient. In the case of telemedicine, healthcare is considered to be provided in the Member State where the healthcare provider is established.
Medical imaging
Medical imaging refers to technologies and processes used to create images of the human body for clinical analysis, diagnostic and treatment purposes. It encompasses many different purposes, techniques, specialties and procedures.
Metadata
Information that is given to describe or help you use other information. Metadata are information parameters that provide contextual information about the actual information within a document (or other information container). Examples are: date of event and/or publication, size in bytes, technical format, template, standard version, document version, author specialty, functional category et cetera.
Mobile Health
mHealth
Mobile wireless technologies for public health
Non-personal electronic health data
Non-personal electronic health data means electronic health data other than
personal electronic health data, encompassing both data that has been
anonymised so that it no longer relates to an identified or identifiable natural person and data that has never related to a data subject.
Patient Summary
PS, health summary record
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Health record extract comprising a standardized collection of clinical and contextual information (retrospective, concurrent, prospective) that provides a snapshot in time of a subject of care’s health information and healthcare.
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is an identifiable dataset of essential and understandable health information that includes the most important clinical facts required to ensure safe and secure healthcare. This summarised version of the patient's medical data gives health professionals the essential information they need to provide care. Although this dataset is intended to aid health professionals in providing unscheduled care, it can also be used to provide planned medical care (e.g. in the case of citizens movements or cross-organisational care paths). It should be kept in mind that not all information is known or is available at the moment of creation of the Patient Summary document.
Personal elecotronic health data
Personal electronic health data means data concerning health and genetic data as defined in Article 4, points (13) and (15), of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, processed in an electronic form.
Point of Care
PoC
Location where direct healthcare activities are performed.
Prescription
Prescription means a prescription for a medicinal product or for a medical device issued by a member of a regulated health profession within the meaning of Article 3(1)(a) of Directive 2005/36/EC who is legally entitled to do so in the Member State in which the prescription is issued.
Primary use of electronic health data
Primary use of electronic health data means the processing of electronic health data for the provision of healthcare to assess, maintain or restore the state of health of the natural person to whom that data relates, including the prescription, dispensation and provision of medicinal products and medical devices, as well as for relevant social, administrative or reimbursement services.
Refined eHealth European interoperability framework
ReEIF
The refined eHealth European interoperability framework (ReEIF) was adopted by the eHealth Network in November 2015. It represents a common refined framework for managing interoperability and standardisation challenges in the eHealth domain in Europe, offering a framework of terms and methodologies for reaching a common language, and a common starting point for the analysis of problems and the description of eHealth solutions throughout Europe.
Secondary use of electronic health data
Secondary use of electronic health data means the processing of electronic health data for purposes set out in Chapter IV of this Regulation, other than the initial purposes for which they were collected or produced
Telehealth
Telehealth is a subset of eHealth and refers to the delivery of healthcare at a distance – according to Greek language, prefix “tele” means “far” or “at distance”, as explained by Varnosafaderani.
It comprehends the delivery of healthcare services by all healthcare professionals, where distance is a critical factor, through the use of ICT to provide clinical and non-clinical services - preventative, promotive and curative healthcare services, research and evaluation, health administration services and continuing education of healthcare providers.
Telehealth is a newer and broader term referring to remote healthcare, including services provided using telemedicine, as well as interaction with automated systems or information resources.
Telemedicine
Telemedicine is a subset of telehealth, as concluded by Sood et al. in a 2007 study after analyzing 104 peer-reviewed definitions of telemedicine. Although some authors inadequately use it to describe the delivery of healthcare services at a distance only by physicians, telemedicine is distinguished from telehealth in the sense that the former focuses on the curative scope of the healthcare services by all healthcare professionals, excluding therefore the preventive and promotive aspects of healthcare as remote training, administrative and educational services.
According to Bashshur, Telemedicine involves the use of modern information technology, especially two-way interactive audio/video communications, computers and telemetry to deliver health services to remote patients and to facilitate information exchange between primary care physicians and specialists at some distance from each other (Bashshur, et al., 1997).
Unscheduled Care
unanticipated care,
unplanned care
Healthcare service for an unexpected demand for care.
Note 1: In this scenario, the assistance needed can be emergency or non-emergency.
Note 2: The International Patient Summary is presumed to be the information needed to quickly help advise, diagnose, and/or treat the person requiring assistance.
Wellness application
Wellness application means any appliance or software intended by the manufacturer to be used by a natural person for processing electronic health data for other purposes than healthcare, such as well-being and pursuing healthy life-styles;
X-eHealth Acronyms List
The following list presents relevant acronyms in the X-eHealth project
Acronym
ATC
CBeHIS
CDA
CEF
CEN
CEN IPS
CEN/TC 251
CIA
CT
DG CNECT
DG SANTE
DICOM
DSI
eDispensation
EEHRxF
eEIF
EHDS
eHDSI / eHealth DSI
eHealth
eHMSEG
eHN
eHN SG on Semantics
eHN SG on TechIOP
EHR
EHRxF
eID
EIF
EMA
EMA SPOR
EN
eP /ePrescription
epSOS
e-SENS
EU
EURO-CAS
EVS Client
EXPAND
FAQs
FHIR
FHIR IG
FSH
GDPR
GP
H2020
HaDEA
HL7
HL7 CDA
HL7 FHIR
ICD-10
ICD-11
ICD-O-3
ICF
ICT
IHE
IHE PCC
IHE XDS
IHE XDS-I
IHE XCA
IHE XCA-I
IHE XDR
IHE XDR-I
IHE MHD
IHE XDM
IHTSDO
IPI
IPS
ISMS
ISO
ISO-IDMP
IT
ITIL
JA
JIC
JIC PSSS
JSON
KPI's
LOINC
LSP
mHealth
MTC
MVC
NCP
NCPeH
NHS
OASIS TALM
OSI
PHIRI
PS
QM
ReEIF
SNOMED CT
SOA
SUT
TEHDaS
TEN-T
TEN-T EA
UML
UNICOM
WP
XML
X-eHealth
XpandDH
xShare
Xt-EHR JA
Term
Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Code
Cross Border eHealth Information Services
Clinical Document Architecture
Connecting Europe Facility
Comité Européen de Normalization (European Committee for Standardization, a federation of 34 national standards bodies that are also ISO member bodies)
CEN International Patient Summary
CEN Technical Committee 251 Health Informatics
Confidentiality, Integrity and Accountability
Clinical Terminologies
Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology
Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety
Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine
Digital Service Infrastructure
Electronic Dispensation
eHealth European Interoperability Framework
eHealth Digital Service Infrastructure
Electronic Health
EHealth Network Subgroup on Technical Interoperability
Electronic Health Record
Electronic Health Record Exchange Format
European Interoperability Framework
European Medicines Agency
EU Telematics Regulatory Network - Substances Products Organisations Referentials
European Standard
Electronic Prescription
Smart Open Services for European Patients
Electronic Simple European Networked Services (project)
European Union
Conformity Assessment Scheme for Europe
External Validator Service Client
Expanding Health Data Interoperability Services
Frequently Asked Questions
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources
FHIR Implementation Guide
FHIR SHortland files
General Data Protection Regulation
General Practitioner
Horizon 2020 Programme
European Health and Digital Executive Agency
Health Level 7
HL7 Clinical Document Architecture
HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources
10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems
11th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems
International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, third edition
International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health
Information and communications technology
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise
IHE Patient Care Coordination
IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing
IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging
IHE Cross Community Access
IHE Cross Community Access for Imaging
IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange
IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange for Imaging
IHE Mobile access to Health Documents
IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Media Interchange
International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation
International Projects and Interoperability
International Patient Summary
Information Security Management System
International Organization for Standardization
IDentification of Medicinal Products
Information Technology
Information Technology Infrastructure Library
Joint Action
Joint Initiative Council
JIC Patient Summary Standards Set
JavaScript Object Notation
Key Performance Indicators
Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes
Large Scale Pilot
Master Translation/Transcodification Catalogue
Model-View-Controller
National Contact Point
National Contact Point for eHealth
National Health Service
OASIS Test Assertion Markup Language
Operations, Security and Infrastructure
Population Health Information Research Infrastruture Project
Patient Summary
Quality Management
Refined eHealth EIF
Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms
Service-Oriented Architecture
System Under Test
(Joint Action)Towards the European Health Data Space
Trans-European Transport Network
Trans-European Transport Network Executive Agency
Unified Markup Language
EU Project focusing on the implementation of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) suite of IDMP (IDentification of Medicinal Products) standards
Work Package
EXtensible Markup Language
eXchanging electronic Health Records in a commom framework (project)
Expanding Digital Health through a pan-European EHRxF-based Ecosystem (project)
Expanding the European EHRxF to share and effectively use health data within the EHDS (project)
Extended Electronic Health Record Joint Action
*Status 16.07.2024
Catalogue
We recommend to consult the following glossaries for supplementary reading:
The following criteria were defined by the project team for including a glossary in the eHealth glossaries catalogue:
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The glossary provides concepts/abbreviations commonly encountered in eHealth
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The glossary is publicly available in an online accessible format
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Concepts and the glossary itself are available in English language
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It is preferably clear how the glossary was developed
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EU scope