The digital health glossary

Also: ADT

🩺 Think of it as: the gate register and ward movement book announced to the whole hospital: every admission, transfer and discharge is called out so each department's patient list stays current

Also: AMAM

Also: AMIA

Also: API

🩺 Think of it as: a standardized referral letter: any clinic can send one and any clinic can read it, without knowing each other's filing systems

Also: AI

🩺 Think of it as: sending a case the way you send a specimen to the reference laboratory: dispatch the images now, the specialist reports when they get to it, and neither of you needs to be free at the same moment

Also: Audit log

🩺 Think of it as: a junior doctor working under supervision: they can triage and offer a second opinion, but a named senior clinician remains responsible for every decision

🩺 Think of it as: trusting the lab printout over your own examination even when the clinical picture clearly disagrees

🩺 Think of it as: every ward register, lab logbook and pharmacy ledger in the country stacked in one room: far too much for any records clerk to tally by hand, so new tools are needed to make sense of it

Also: BCP, Business Continuity

Also: BI

🩺 Think of it as: the matron's monthly summary board: raw ward registers turned into charts the management team can read at a glance and act on

Also: B2G

🩺 Think of it as: clinical training itself: you master history-taking and vital signs before attempting procedures, and analytics must master data quality before machine learning

Also: CAB

Also: CMIO

Also: CNIO

Also: MPI, Master patient index / client registry

🩺 Think of it as: the records office's master card index guaranteeing one patient, one folder

Also: CDSS, CDS

🩺 Think of it as: a senior colleague at the bedside who reminds you of the protocol and flags a drug interaction, while the decision stays yours

Also: CAHIIM

Also: CHW

Also: CBHI

Also: CAD

🩺 Think of it as: a tireless second reader of every chest X-ray who never fatigues, flagging films for your review rather than replacing your reading

Also: CPOE

Also: CPD

Also: CCMM

Also: COBIT

🩺 Think of it as: the vital-signs chart at the foot of the bed, but for an entire facility or programme: the key numbers trended so trouble is spotted at a glance

🩺 Think of it as: an alarming lab value from a haemolysed sample: the number reflects how the specimen was handled, not what is happening in the patient

Also: NHDD

🩺 Think of it as: the national pharmacopoeia for data: the one reference book every facility consults so that every term has the same definition everywhere

🩺 Think of it as: a records storeroom where every folder, film and lab slip is kept exactly as it arrived, unsorted until the day someone needs to study it

🩺 Think of it as: translating one hospital's abbreviations and codes into another's before a transfer, so the receiving team reads the chart exactly as intended

🩺 Think of it as: the maternity unit's own shelf of folders drawn from the central records room and arranged for that ward's daily questions

Also: DPIA

Also: DPO

🩺 Think of it as: the hospital's central records room: ward registers, lab logbooks and pharmacy ledgers filed together in one organized place so reports can be compiled without visiting every department

Also: DSA

🩺 Think of it as: vital signs charted faithfully every shift while nobody ever adjusts the treatment plan: the recording works, the deciding does not

🩺 Think of it as: the morning handover round applied to the numbers: a fixed team habit of reviewing the facts together and leaving with decisions

Also: De-identification

🩺 Think of it as: a trainee who learns to recognise a rash from thousands of cases rather than a textbook description, building up from edges to patterns to diagnoses

🩺 Think of it as: the surgical safety checklist: no incision until every item is confirmed, and no AI go-live until every gate is passed

Also: DHIS2, District Health Information Software 2

🩺 Think of it as: the district's stack of monthly tally sheets rebuilt as one national electronic ledger that every level of the health system can read and analyse

🩺 Think of it as: the district's monthly reporting tally book and the patient's own folder, kept as free shared tools: DHIS2 adds up activity across facilities while OpenMRS keeps each patient's record

Also: Champion / super-user

🩺 Think of it as: the hospital gate, reception desk and appointment book moved onto the patient's phone, where the care journey begins before anyone is seen in person

Also: DHBp

Also: DHI

Also: DHP

🩺 Think of it as: the hospital's shared services (records office, central pharmacy, porters) that every ward relies on instead of each building its own

Also: DIAM

Also: DICOM

🩺 Think of it as: a standard film jacket for imaging: any radiology department can open it and find the images and the patient details labelled the same familiar way

Also: DPGs

🩺 Think of it as: generic essential medicines for software: quality-assured, open to all, adaptable locally, and no single vendor controls the formula

Also: DR

Also: ETA

Also: eCHIS

🩺 Think of it as: the health extension worker's family folder and field registers carried on a tablet instead of paper

Also: eHealth

Also: EHR

Also: EMR

🩺 Think of it as: the patient's paper folder at one facility, digitised: the same chart, but legible, searchable, and never lost in the records room

Also: EMRAM

🩺 Think of it as: the stock cards and bin cards of every store kept live in one ledger, so the central pharmacy sees an emptying shelf or an expiring batch and moves stock in time

🩺 Think of it as: the folder kept in one clinic's records office versus a folder that follows the patient to every facility they visit

Also: MPI, EMPI

🩺 Think of it as: a sharp-eyed records officer who notices that Abebe Kebede registered in OPD and Kebede Abebe registered in maternity are the same person, and merges the two folders into one

🩺 Think of it as: a secure national courier network linking every facility's records office so patient and programme information can travel where it is needed

Also: EPHI

🩺 Think of it as: the evidence grade you would give any therapy: proven here, promising elsewhere but unvalidated locally, or still experimental

Also: ETL

🩺 Think of it as: a records clerk who pulls the numbers out of the ward registers, cleans and re-tabulates them, then files the tidy totals into the central report book

🩺 Think of it as: a confident student inventing a plausible answer instead of saying they do not know

🩺 Think of it as: the ministry's official register of health facilities: if a clinic is not listed there, it does not officially exist

Also: HL7 FHIR, FHIR

🩺 Think of it as: a modern pre-printed referral pad with clearly labelled boxes (patient, observation, encounter) that any facility's system can fill in and any other can read quickly

Also: MoH

🩺 Think of it as: every programme keeping its own separate folder on the same patient, with no one able to read the whole story in one place

Also: GDHM

Also: HIE

🩺 Think of it as: a trusted courier service between records offices: wherever the patient presents, the authorized clinician can obtain the notes from the facilities that treated them before

Also: HIM

Also: HIS

🩺 Think of it as: the hospital's whole records ecosystem: the people, the registers, the filing rules and the technology together, not just the computers

Also: HISP

Also: HL7

🩺 Think of it as: the agreed grammar for messages between hospital systems, the way a standard lab request form has fields both the ward and the laboratory know by heart

Also: HMIS

Also: HSTP

Also: HIMSS

Also: HL7 v2

🩺 Think of it as: the telegram style of hospital messaging: terse coded lines that look cryptic to outsiders yet are understood by nearly every system already in place

🩺 Think of it as: a named consultant countersigning every intern's plan: assistance may draft, but an accountable clinician signs

Also: ITIL

Also: INFRAM

Also: IRB

Also: IHE

🩺 Think of it as: standard operating procedures for interoperability: tested, step-by-step profiles that combine standards like HL7 and DICOM into workflows proven in real facilities

🩺 Think of it as: two departments arranging a private hand-off between themselves, as opposed to a hospital-wide referral system that every unit can join

🩺 Think of it as: a drug's licensed indication: prescribe it off-label and the trial evidence no longer covers you

Also: ICD-10

Also: ICD-11

Also: IMIA

Also: ITU

🩺 Think of it as: two labs reporting results in the same units and format, so any clinician can act on them

🩺 Think of it as: one central records desk between departments: every note passes through a single point that checks it is on the standard form, enters it in the log and routes it to the right unit

Also: KPI

Also: LIS

🩺 Think of it as: the laboratory's request book, specimen register, worksheets and report book fused into one live record, with the analysers writing their results straight into it

Also: LLM, LMM

Also: LHS

🩺 Think of it as: a clinical audit cycle that never stops: each patient treated teaches the system something that improves care for the next

Also: LOINC

🩺 Think of it as: a universal catalogue number for every laboratory test, so a fasting glucose result means exactly the same assay whichever lab reports it

🩺 Think of it as: a ward that keeps working through a power cut: record now, file to the main system when the connection returns, and treat a weak signal as the normal working day

Also: ML

🩺 Think of it as: an intern learning from thousands of past cases: what they have seen shapes what they can recognise

Also: MFR

🩺 Think of it as: the professional council's register, but for facilities: one authoritative national entry per clinic recording where it is, what it offers and who owns it

Also: MoU

🩺 Think of it as: the label on a specimen container: not the sample itself, but who collected it, when, and what it is

Also: mHealth

Also: M&E

Also: MFA

Also: NLP

🩺 Think of it as: a registrar who can read every free-text note in the ward and reliably pull out the diagnoses, doses, and allergies

🩺 Think of it as: an openly shared master plan for a national records-exchange system, drafted by a community of practitioners and adapted by each country like a WHO guideline

🩺 Think of it as: the generic essential medicine of patient-folder software: free, proven, and formulated so district hospitals can adapt it to their own needs

🩺 Think of it as: a treatment guideline applied to a patient group it was never trialled on

🩺 Think of it as: the patient-held card made live: a window patients open into their own folder to see results and appointments and to leave the clinic a note

Also: PPV

🩺 Think of it as: the same PPV you use for any screening test: at low prevalence most positives are false, and an AI flag is no different

🩺 Think of it as: pharmacovigilance for software: keep watching for side effects long after the medicine is licensed

Also: PMO

🩺 Think of it as: writing a good lab request: the clearer the question and the clinical details, the more useful the answer that comes back

Also: PHI

Also: RACI

Also: RIS, PACS

🩺 Think of it as: the imaging department's appointment book and report register (RIS) joined to a film library that every ward can open at the same time, with no film ever leaving the department (PACS)

🩺 Think of it as: a supervised trial ward: innovation is allowed, but inside defined limits, under close monitoring, with the authority to stop

Also: RPM

Also: RBAC

Also: RCA

🩺 Think of it as: a referral letter you can open and read (syntactic) versus one in which every abbreviation means exactly what the writer intended (semantic)

Also: SLA

Also: SHR

🩺 Think of it as: one master patient folder kept centrally, into which every clinic visit, admission and lab result is filed over a lifetime

Also: SSO

🩺 Think of it as: national treatment guidelines delivered like a formulary update to every facility's software at once, instead of workshop by workshop

🩺 Think of it as: three ways to reach any phone: a short written note (SMS), a live question-and-answer at the counter that leaves nothing behind once you walk away (USSD), and a recorded nurse reading instructions aloud for those who cannot read (IVR)

Also: SaMD, Software as a medical device

🩺 Think of it as: leaving the patient's folder and films on the consultant's desk for review when they next pass, instead of calling them to the bedside right now

🩺 Think of it as: the difference between the ticked boxes on a lab request form and the free-text story in the progress notes: the boxes tally easily, the story does not

Also: SNOMED CT

🩺 Think of it as: a vast multilingual clinical dictionary that gives every finding, procedure and body structure its own precise code, far finer-grained than the ICD list used for reporting

🩺 Think of it as: an agreed clinical shorthand: instead of each clinician inventing wording, everyone picks from the same coded list so an entry means the same thing in every facility

🩺 Think of it as: the chief pharmacist for vocabulary: the live authority any system can ask to confirm exactly which diagnosis, test or drug a code stands for

Also: TCO

🩺 Think of it as: the true cost of an ambulance: over its lifetime, the fuel, tyres, driver and maintenance far outweigh the purchase price

🩺 Think of it as: trusting a new lab analyser only after you have run it against your own known samples

Also: UHC

🩺 Think of it as: a check at the moment of prescribing that flags or blocks a tenfold overdose before it ever reaches the patient

Also: VPN

Also: WHO six principles

Also: WHO