Clinical Information Modeling Initiative

Mission

Improve the interoperability of healthcare systems through shared implementable clinical information models.

(A single curated collection.)

Charter

• Create a shared repository of detailed clinical information models
• Using an approved formalism
• Archetype Definition Language (ADL)
• Archetype Modeling Language (AML)
• Based on a common set of base data types
• With formal bindings of the models to standard coded terminologies
• Repository is open to everyone and models are licensed free for use at no cost

Models will support multiple contexts:

• EHR data storage and retrieval using standard APIs
• Message payload and service payload
• Decision logic (queries of EHR data)
• Clinical trials data (clinical research)
• Quality measures
• Normalization of data for secondary use
• Creation of data entry screens (like SDC)
• Capture of coding output from NLP

Work Products and Contributions to HL7 Processes

• Reference Information Model
• Shared repository of models
  • One or more examples of instance data will be created for each model
  • showing both proper and improper use
  • Models shall specify a single preferred unit of measure (unit normalization)
  • Models can support inclusion of processing knowledge (default values)
• Tools/compilers/transformers to create representations of the models to support software developers need (joint work)
• Tracking and documentation of the use of the models and the experience gained in using the models

 

Formal Relationships With Other HL7 Groups

• FHIR
• Patient Care
• Clinical Decision Support
• Structured Documents
• Vocabulary
• Clinical Interoperability Council
• Service Oriented Architecture
• Templates
• Terminology Authority

Formal Relationship With Groups Outside of HL7

• Object Management Group
• IHTSDO (SNOMED International)
• ISO
• Center for Medical Interoperability
• LOINC
• Healthcare Services Platform Consortium
• Veterans Administration
• openEHR
• Results 4 Care
• EN 13606 Organization

Explanation of demonstrated need:   

The goal of plug and play interoperability cannot be met without a common basis for interpreting the data that is being exchanged.  In the current environment, significant resources are expended to map one data representation to another to enable data from a source system to be consumed by a receiving system.  The lack of common data representations also increases the complexity of and potentially limits the capacity to develop and implement clinical decision support.  The CIMI Clinical Information Models will provide an iso-semantic representation of clinical data that is bound to reference terminologies.  From this common modeling paradigm consistent and semantically equivalent representations can be generated to support a variety of technical implementations, e.g., FHIR, XML, HL7 messages.    

Date of Last Revision

October 8, 2015