Glossary
Advanced Task Tracking
The management and coordination of tasks, reminders and outstanding referral requests from within the EMR.
Aggregate Data
Data collected from several sources into one location, with the goal of extracting information from this location at a later time.
Anonymized Clinical Data
The de-identified clinical data about individual patients that is available to health-care providers and other stakeholders.
Automated Patient Reminders
Automated communication systems that prompt patients for appointments using emails, text messages, or automated phone calls.
Application Service Provider (ASP)
An EMR system architecture where the EMR data and the application software is hosted offsite and not within the clinic.
Bi-directional
The two-way communication between EMRs and providers, exchanging information around patient care.
Care Plan
A set of actions that have been identified to treat a patient’s diagnosis following an assessment.
Chronic Disease Management-Quality Improvement Program (CDM-QIP)
Optimizing the management of chronic diseases in a patient population with the help of tools within the EMR.
Clinical Best Practice Guidelines
Recommendations created by health-care professionals that support the delivery of care.
Clinical Decision Support
Specific software designed to assist health-care providers with decision making with respect to clinical diagnosis and treatment.
Cloud-Based Document Management
A securely hosted service that allows document capture, storage, search, retrieval and sharing for the effective management of information accessible via any web browser.
Community of Practice
A collaboration of a group of physicians and practices to gain knowledge related to a specific health care topic. The community of practice also implements these best practices as part of its care delivery to a population of patients.
Comparative Analytic Reports
Custom reporting that entails the comparison of two or more alternatives, clinical modifier outcomes, processes or the like from data within the EMR to determine trends in a practice's administrative and clinical operations.
Custodian
In accordance with the Personal Health Information Act of Canada, a health-care provider is a custodian of health information and is responsible for safeguarding this information.
Custom Forms
Custom Forms in the EMR are electronic versions of paper forms that conform to a health-care provider's formatting standards. Some custom forms are filled out, then printed and used for lab requisitions.
Dashboard
A dashboard is a data visualization tool which displays clinical metrics and other key performance indicators.
Data Migration
Data migration is the process of transferring data between two different Electronic Medical Record systems. For migration to be successful, proper time and effort is allocated for planning, preparation and for the data transfer itself.
Data Quality
The extent to which the data entered into the EMR are structured or unstructured and are available for extraction at a later time.
Data Sharing
Making de-identified EMR data available for research, investigation and scholarly work to other agencies and institutions.
Diagnostic Imaging
Diagnostic imaging, also called medical imaging, the use of electromagnetic radiation and certain other technologies to produce images of internal structures of the body for the purpose of accurate diagnosis.
Discrete Data
Data that are recorded as a set of distinct values, i.e., a patient’s test result could be recorded as a discrete value.
Downtime
This refers to a period of time during which a system is not functioning or is unavailable because of an unplanned event or due to scheduled maintenance...
Electronic Health Record (EHR)
An electronic record of health-related information on an individual that can be created, managed, and consulted by authoized clinicians and staff across more than one organization. In Saskatchewan the provincial EHR, is known as 'eHR viewer'.
Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
An electronic version of a patient chart used in a clinical setting to capture patient data and episoidic patient encounters.
EMR Forms
An E-Form is an electronic version of commonly used paper forms which can be auto-populated with the patient's demographic and some clinical information from the EMR. These forms can range from very simple to complex with clinical applications, embedded guidelines and medical decision support functionality.
EMR Implementation Experience
The series of EMR adoption events starting from preparation, selection, implementation and moving on to the actual use of the EMR solution within a practice.
EMR Scheduler
Electronic scheduling workflow in order to quickly find patient appointments, optimize the provider’s time and increase efficiency in managing the practice.
EMR Security
A set of tools that are embedded into the EMR to protect EMR data from threats to patient privacy and confidentiality.
E-Booking
An e-booking system is an internet-based service enabling patients to view availability in the practice calendar to book and manage their own appointments.
E-Consultations
A web-based service that allows family physicians and specialists to securely share health information and discuss patient care virtually.
E-Fax
An electronic fax service that enables clinic staff to send and receive faxes using the internet rather than a phone line such as by email or online for clinical and non-clinical documents directly from/to an EMR.
E-Prescribing
The ability to create accurate and understandable prescriptions within the EMR and send these electronically from the health-care provider to the pharmacy of a patient's choice.
E-Referral
Online service that automates the management of the referral processes between health-care providers to support more timely and efficient management of patient referrals.
E-Rostering
Rostering of patients electronically, particularly with the use of an EMR connected to a provincial system, enables co-management of patient enrolment. This can enable more accurate and up-to-date information about both the panel size of a practice and the demographic and diagnostic information about the population being served.
EMR Implementation Support
Support provided by SMA EMR Program Advisors to assist in the adoption of an EMR. This may involve a clinic that is moving from paper to electronic medical records or supporting a physician that is opening a new clinic.
Handwriting Recognition Software
The ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from touch-screens, paper and other devices. (See 'Optical Character Recognition').
Health Information Protection Act (HIPA)
HIPA 2003 establishes rules for the collection, use and disclosure of personal health information, protecting the confidentiality of an individuals’ information while facilitating the effective provision of health-care.
Home Monitoring Tools
Tools located in patients' homes to help them monitor and better manage their own health at home. Examples of these are blood pressure cuffs, pulse oximeters, and glucometers with information transmitted to health-care providers via smartphone devices.
ICD
The International Classification of Disease is a diagnostic tool to classify diseases and other health problems to enhance the retrieval of diagnostic information for quality purposes.
ICPC
The International Classification of Primary Care is a classification method for primary care encounters, allowing for a classification of ‘reason for encounter’.
Instant Messaging
The transmission of short messages over a network or the Internet, bi-directionally between two parties. Instant messaging is increasingly popular as a communication tool within practices and organizations.
Interactive Trending
The use of patient data to render interactive graphs that visualizes trends over time. Graphs can be filtered to select only desired data.
Macros
A set of rules or a pattern of commands programmed to enter information into a system, such as an Electronic Medical Record.
Nomenclature/Coding Standards
An organized computer processable collection of clinical terms. These standards promote a consistent approach to store, transmit and receive data between EMRs.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
The conversion of scanned documents and reports into text (computer readable) format in the EMR.
Panorama
Panorama is a comprehensive, integrated public health information system designed for public health professionals. It is an information system that enables more efficient management of immunization information, vaccine inventory, and cases and outbreaks of communicable diseases.
Patient Demographics
Identifiable data about a patient such as name, address, date of birth.
Portable Document Format is a file format used to represent documents in a manner independent of software, hardware and operating systems.
Pharmaceutical Information Program (PIP)
An information management system that links physicians, pharmacists, hospitals and other authorized health-care providers, giving them confidential access to patient medication histories, and equipping them with decision-support tools for prescribing, dispensing and enabling electronic prescriptions.
Population Care Management
Managing patient care with a focus on quality of care across all care settings at the population level.
Preventative Screening
The use of the EMR to identify patients who need to be screened for a condition, based on patient symptoms and indicators previously recorded in the EMR.
Proactive Care
EMRs provide access to up-to-date patient information with advanced decision support capabilities to aid physicians with the ability to proactively influence patients’ health over time.
Queries and Ad-Hoc Queries
The creation of an enquiry into patient data. A query can be customized depending on the questions that need to be answered.
Regional System
A health information management tool or system deployed and used on a local scale. As an example, an automated regional public surveillance system to improve health outcomes related to communicable diseases.
Repository
The storage of EMR data in a central location for use at a later time.
Saskatchewan Formulary
The Saskatchewan Formulary lists the drugs, which are covered by the Saskatchewan Drug Plan.
Saskatchewan Health Quality Council (HQC)
HQC is a provincial organization with a mandate to accelerate improvement in the quality of health care in Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan Laboratory Result Repository (SLRR)
A repository of standardized laboratory results that facilitates the secure electronic delivery of results between Saskatchewan Health Authority and Roy Romanow Provincial laboratories to practitioners within Saskatchewan.
Secure Messages
An approach to sending sensitive information over the Internet that is compliant with privacy requirements.
Scanning Safeguards
An approach to data quality management for documents received in the practice, ensuring that the data in the documents are accurately recorded in the EMR.
Smart Tools
Data entry tools (checklists, pick lists, templates)
Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED)
SNOMED is an organized collection of medical terms providing codes, terms, synonyms and definitions.
Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan (SOAP) Notes
Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan refers to the method of documentation employed by health-care providers to write out notes in a patient chart as a part of practice workflow.
Structured Data
EMR data stored in a way that is normalized and optimized for analysis at a later time. Structured data are also easier to transfer from one EMR system to another.
Structured Templates
A structured approach to entering data and documenting patient encounters in the EMR.
