Health Care Technology Glossary from CONNECT

CONNECT A flexible, extensible, cross-platform solution to enable public and private organizations to participate in the NHIN by leveraging their existing health information systems.
CONNECT adapter Or simply "adapter", the portion of the CONNECT architecture that encapsulates the components most likely to be customized or replaced by an organization implementing CONNECT.
CONNECT Development Team A contractor team responsible for implementing the CONNECT solution as a software product, including detailed design, software construction, and testing services.
CONNECT gateway Or simply "gateway", the portion of the CONNECT architecture that encapsulates the components most likely to be use as-is by an organization without modification. These components are primarily responsible for orchestrating information exchange with the NHIN.
CONNECT Program Management Office The leadership team responsible for the day-to-day oversight of CONNECT development, serving as liaison to the other CONNECT stakeholder teams. The PMO includes an Initiative Lead, a Project Manager, and a Chief Architect, as well as supporting staff.
core NHIN services A set of the ten primary services identified in the NHIN Trial Implementations to enable secure exchange of electronic health information.
Enterprise Service Components Within the CONNECT solution, a set of robust, enterprise-class reference implementations for indexing patient identities, maintaining health documents, implementing business rules, and maintaining auditable access logs - as elements of the SDK.
health information exchange Or HIE, an entity that enables the movement of health-related data among entities within a state, a region, or a non-jurisdictional participant group, which might include a "classic" regional health information organizations at regional and state levels, integrated delivery systems and health plans, or health data banks that support health information exchange.
health information organization Or HIO, an organization that enables the movement of health-related data among entities, evolving as a replacement term for health information exchange or HIE.
Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel Or simply HITSP, a cooperative partnership between the public and private sectors formed and supported by ONC for the purpose of harmonizing and integrating standards that will meet clinical and business needs established by AHIC use cases for sharing information among organizations and systems.
Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise Or more often simply IHE, an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information, promoting and coordinating the use of established standards such as DICOM and HL7 to address specific clinical need in support of optimal patient care.
Nationwide Health Information Network Or NHIN, is being developed by ONC to provide a secure, nationwide, interoperable health information infrastructure that will connect providers, consumers, and others involved in supporting health and healthcare.
NHIN Cooperative A collective set of information exchanges, including providers, and several Federal agencies, established as part of the Trial Implementations to work together to securely exchange data, including summary patient records, for providers and patients, and to define data use and reciprocal support agreements and other operational standards for NHIN participants.
NHIN Gateway Within the CONNECT solution, the implementation of the core NHIN services and service interface specifications, comprising the CONNECT gateway and CONNECT adapter.
NHIN health information exchange Or NHIE, a health information exchange that implements the NHIN architecture, processes, and procedures, and is accredited as a participant of the NHIN.
NHIN-enabled organization An organization that implements the NHIN architecture, processes, and procedures, and is accredited as a participant of the NHIN. NHIEs are an example.
NHIN Trial Implementations Phase 2 of the NHIN initiative sponsored by ONC, the demonstration of information exchange using NHIN standards begun in 2007 between nine health information exchanges, six additional grantees, and Federal agencies.
NHIN Limited Production Phase 3 of the NHIN initiative sponsored by ONC, building on the capabilities and lessons learned developed during the Trial Implementations to move the NHIN into limited production during 2009.
pseudonymization The process of removing the association between data and the subject of that data, and adding an association between the data and an alternative identifier.
reidentification The process of obtaining the association between a pseudonym and the original subject of the data set.
schema A means for defining the structure, content, and semantics of XML documents.
Security Assertion Markup Language Or SAML, is an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains.
service oriented architecture Or SOA, is an architecture approach that packages functionality as interoperable, loosely-coupled units, or services, made accessible over a network and communicating by passing data independent of operating system or programming language.
software architecture The structure or structures of a system which comprise software elements, the externally visible properties of those elements, and the relationships among them [CONNECTWIKI:Bass 2003]. "Externally visible" properties refer to assumptions other elements can make of an element, such as the services it provides, performance characteristics, fault handling, shared resource usage, etc.
Universal Client Framework Within the CONNECT solution, a framework for developers to create applications that use the Enterprise Service Components.
view A representation of a whole system from the perspective of a related set of concerns, or a representation of a particular type of software element that occurs in a system, their properties, and the relations among them.
Views and Beyond An approach to software architecture documentation developed by the Software Engineering Institute comprising descriptions of a set of relevant views of an architecture, along with information that applies to more than one view or to the set of as a whole. The approach is consistent with IEEE recommended practice.
web services description language Or WSDL, an XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information.

Health Care Technolgy Acronyms

XDR
Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange

XSPA Cross-enterprise Security and Privacy Authorization
XML eXtensible Markup Language