Assessment Curation and Data Collection (ACDC)
The Assessment Curation and Data Collection (ACDC) profile enables assessment developers and curators a means by which they can distribute assessment instruments to healthcare providers, supporting exchange of assessment data in a standardized form using the HL7 FHIR Questionnaire resource. It provides the opportunity for provider organizations to choose from an variety of instruments yet integrate them using a common interface.
Summary
Assessment content is often controlled Intellectual Property that requires licensing agreements or which has specific implementation requirements in order to maintain validity of the instrument results. This presents challenges for potential users of the instrument to identify and select appropriate assessment content for use within a health information system, and for content developers and curators in enabling distribution of instruments to wider audiences. These constraints often lead to curator specific implementation constraints which prevent wider adoption of assessment content across multiple health IT vendors, leading to lock-in to a limited set of audiences.
The ACDC profile enables Assessment content providers to describe assessment content and control access to the Intellectual property, yet still make it more readily available to a broader set of users. It enables health IT system vendors and developers to access a broader selection of content without the need for developing customized implementations.
Benefits
The ACDC Profile enables curators of assessment content to:
- Distribute information about assessment content in a standardized way so that potential users can readily access it, AND
- Hide details about the implementation of the instrument that aren't important to use of the data provided by the assessment instrument, preserving IP.
It enables assessment users to:
- Access content from a broad variety of sources
- Obtain results from assessment instruments that they would not otherwise have without special interfacing.
Finally, this profile enables developers of assessment forms to:
- Make available content that is designed using form technology other than FHIR Questionnaires to be made available to systems that can access FHIR content (e.g., FHIR Structured Data Capture).
Details
The ACDC profile separates the functions of Curation and Distribution from the function of Data Collection. The first two (curation and distribution) enable healthcare providers to select content from multiple content providers with adequate detail to enable selection and acquisition, and when permitted by the content provider, to access the assessment content as a FHIR Questionnaire resource. The latter function (data collection) enables the healthcare providers health IT system to USE the selected assessment content, and obtain from it the responses in FHIR Questionnaire format to enable data collection and storage. It does so in a way that allows the assessment provider to hide the details and mechanics of data collection (IP), yet still provide the assessment results to the healthcare providers health IT system in a standard format.
The ACDC Profile is based on the HL7 FHIR Questionnaire and QuestionnaireResponse
Systems Affected
EHR , Enterprise-wide, and departmental information systems may find ACDC an effective way to collect patient assessment data for internal storage or exchange with external consumers (e.g., disease registries, public health agencies). Web application developers developing front ends for assessment developers or curators may find the ACDC profile an effective way to distribute and promote the use of assessment content.
Actors & Transactions:
Specification
Profile Status: Public Comment
Documents:
Underlying Standards:
See Also
Related Profiles
The Structured Data Capture [SDC] profile describes a mechanism by which forms used to capture structured data can be implemented. These are functionally the same as FHIR Questionnaires, but have different implementation details for how data is presented and captured. This profile allows a system which implements the IHE SDC profile to also be used to deliver assessment content via a FHIR Questionnaire.
Consumer Information
The ACDC FAQ answers typical questions about what the ACDC Profile does.
The ACDC Purchasing describes considerations when purchasing equipment to deploy this Profile.
Implementer Information
The ACDC Implementation provides additional information about implementing this Profile in software.
Reference Articles A Brief Summary of the IHE ACDC Profile
This page is based on the Profile Overview Template