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Responsible Owner: Work Group Terminology Infrastructure icon Standards Status: Informative

4.0 Terminology Module

4.0.1 Introduction

The Terminology Module is a foundational component of core FHIR specification. Any terminology related resource type, operation or datatype is part of the Terminology Module.

The diagram below shows the relationship between terminology-related artifacts.

Image showing the terminology resources and relationships
terminology-capabilities conceptmap terminology-service codesystem valueset elementdefinition namingsystem element

Example: Condition profile with Condition.code slice bound to "SNOMED CT fracture codes" value set

[Note: Blue boxes denote resources in the Terminology Module and brown boxes denote resources/datatypes outside of it.]

4.0.2 Index

The Terminology Module covers the following:

Resources

Terminology Service

Terminology Specific Operations

  • CodeSystem
  • ValueSet
  • ConceptMap
  • NamingSystem

Coded Datatypes

Documentation

4.0.3 Security and Privacy

For security considerations for terminology services, see the Terminology Service page Security section. For more general considerations, see the Security and Privacy module.

4.0.4 Common Use Cases

  • Create or reference a code system
  • Create, reference or expand a value set
  • Record codes, expressions and translations
  • Validate or look up a display term for a code
  • Translate a code from one value set to another
  • Test subsumption between concepts
  • Create or reference a concept map
  • Formally describing the capabilities of a terminology service
  • Operate a terminology service

4.0.5 Development Roadmap

The following terminology resources have been tested and are being used in production tooling and are normative.