Clinical Mapping

Clinical Mapping Profile supports the need of systems to translate codes from one terminology to another to support exchange of information between different systems.

Summary

Translations supported in the Clinical Mapping Profile are often needed at workflow boundaries where concepts used in one workflow have different names than those in another workflow. For example, in reporting device information to an EMR system, the device vendor may wish to capture device measurements of vital signs using internationally recognized terminologies provided by those devices, but the EMR may need to report these measurements using different terminologies to support local requirements. Another example would be for cases where data captured to support clinical activity for diagnosis or treatment must then be used to facilitate charge capture processes.

There are two ways that mappings can be done. The system doing the mapping can obtain the information on how to map individual terms as needed (e.g., through a query to a terminology mapper), or it can obtain data describing how the mapping should be done for all terms at a single point in time (e.g., startup). The former capability supports all terminology mapping needs, but may have a performance penalty when a large number of mappings need to be performed. The latter capability works in cases where the number of terms to be mapped is small, and the rules by which the mapping is performed are well defined.

Benefits

Significant time savings
Data entry error reduction
Consistency in practice to permit comparison and aggregation of data post-conversion

Details

A crosswalk is a mapping from one coding system to another in which concepts from the source coding system are mapped to concepts in the target code system. The simplest form of crosswalk is a lookup table. This form is often used to translate from local codes to codes from standard terminologies. Guidance on the concepts of input context and output context are provided in this profile that deal with factors affecting both the inbound and outbound sides of code translations. Additionally, CMAP supports access to individual transactions providing the opportunity for implementers to leverage features such as cacheing and refreshing of terminology maps that are provided by external services.