Call for a Standard Clinical Vocabulary

Abstract

The medical informatics community—vendors and users—have been seeking a common, comprehensive clinical vocabulary for the past decade. New models for health care and new reporting requirements increase the necessity and desirability of such a vocabulary set. Much of the negotiation time between systems interested in exchanging data is related to matching vocabulary and code sets. Unfortunately, that is only the beginning and on-going work is required to keep the vocabulary sets synchronized. At the same time, increased emphases on decision support, clinical guidelines, integrated delivery systems, and data reporting for performance evaluation require more precise and understandable vocabulary terms.