Data Group Library
The National E-Health Data Group Library (Data Group Library) contains a suite of specifications that we have developed for the Australian healthcare sector. It has been developed to provide user-friendly access to our data and content specifications for clinical concepts. It provides the existing clinical data and content specifications in a format that allows easy browsing and a wider variety of downloadable options for use by system designers, software developers and implementers including machine readable formats.
The library contains both:
- Data Specifications for particular health topics, for example foundation 'data groups' such as problem/diagnosis, clinical intervention, adverse reactions
- Content Specifications for structured clinical documents such as discharge summary and referral, which make use of the foundation data groups.
Our data specifications are aimed at standardising the information structure and language used to name and describe clinical concepts, and to provide the necessary contextual constraints to remove potential ambiguity in clinical statements. They are not intended to be software or messaging design specifications. Instead, they represent the clinical information requirements for data collection and information exchange required for facilitating safe and effective continuity of care across healthcare for example, General Practice and Acute Care.
The specifications that we are developing are of high priority to standardise, in order to effectively achieve level 4 (semantic) interoperability in the Australian healthcare environment. Semantic interoperability means that the information exchanged by different computer systems can be interpreted by both computer applications and human users.
UML Class diagrams complement the specifications and explain relevant information structures, concept names and data types in a concise, industry-standard format.