Digital Health Glossary
The intersection of technology and healthcare is rapidly expanding, generating new terms, acronyms, and jargon that can be challenging to keep up with. This glossary is designed to demystify these terms, providing clear definitions for both newcomers and seasoned professionals.
ACA (Affordable Care Act): U.S. healthcare reform law enacted in March 2010, often known as "Obamacare". Its goal is to give more Americans access to affordable, quality health insurance and to reduce the growth in U.S. health care spending.
Academic Medical Center: An organization that includes a medical school, one or more other health professional schools (such as nursing, pharmacy, or public health), and one or more hospitals. These centers often focus on research, education, and clinical care.
ACO (Accountable Care Organization): A group of healthcare providers who give coordinated care, chronic disease management, and thereby improve the quality of care patients get. The organization's payment is tied to achieving healthcare quality goals and outcomes that result in cost savings.
Adherence: (or compliance or concordance) a measure of the extent to which patients undergo, continue to follow, or persist with a treatment or regimen as prescribed, e.g., taking drugs, undergoing a medical or surgical procedure, doing an exercise regimen, or abstaining from smoking.
Acute care: Medical care for an episode of injury or an illness.
Allied healthcare providers: Specially trained health care professionals other than physicians. Allied health care providers include optometrists, chiropractors, podiatrists, and nurse practitioners.
Allowable charges: The specific dollar amount of a medical bill that Medicare, Medicaid, or a health plan will pay for a service.
AI (Artificial Intelligence): A branch of computer science that involves the development of systems able to perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence.
Ambulatory Care: Medical care for an injury or an illness that can be provided on an outpatient basis.
API (Application Programming Interface): A set of protocols, routines, and tools for building software and applications.
Bayesian statistics: a branch of statistics that involves learning from evidence as it accumulates. It is based on Bayes’ Rule (or Bayes’ Theorem), a mathematical equation that expresses how the prior (initial) probability of an event (or the probability that a hypothesis is true or the distribution for an unknown quantity) changes to a posterior (updated) probability given relevant new evidence. For example, in the diagnosis of a condition in an individual patient, a prior probability of a diagnosis may be based on the known prevalence of that condition in a relevant population. This can be updated to a posterior probability based on whether the result of a diagnostic test for that condition in that patient is positive or negative.
Behavioral Health: Generally refers to mental health and substance use disorders, life stressors and crises, and stress-related physical symptoms. Behavioral health care refers to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of those conditions.
Benchmarking: a quality assurance process in which an organization sets goals and measures its performance in comparison to those of the products, services, and practices of other organizations that are recognized as leaders.
Big Data: A term that refers to the massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is too large to process using traditional database and software techniques.
Blockchain: A type of database that stores data in blocks that are chained together. It's especially known for its security and decentralization features.
Capitation: A payment arrangement for healthcare providers where they receive a set amount for each enrolled person assigned to them, per period of time.
Causal Pathway: Also known as an analytical framework, a depiction (e.g., in a schematic) of direct and indirect linkages between interventions and outcomes. For a clinical problem, a causal pathway typically includes a patient population, one or more alternative interventions (e.g., screening, diagnosis, and/or treatment), intermediate outcomes (e.g., biological markers), and health outcomes. Causal pathways are intended to provide clarity and explicitness in defining the questions to be addressed in an assessment; they are useful in identifying pivotal linkages for which evidence may be lacking.
CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services): A federal agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services that administers the nation's major healthcare programs.
Chargemaster: A comprehensive listing of items billable to a hospital patient or a patient's health insurance provider.
Chronic Disease: A condition that lasts 1 year or more and requires ongoing medical attention or limits activities of daily living or both (e.g. diabetes, cancer, obesity, arthritis).
Clinical Endpoint: An event or other outcome that can be measured objectively to determine whether an intervention achieved its desired impact on patients. Usual clinical endpoints are mortality (death), morbidity (disease progression), symptom relief, quality of life, and adverse events. These are often categorized as primary (of most importance) endpoints and secondary (additional though not of greatest interest) endpoints.
Clinical Pathway: A multidisciplinary set of daily prescriptions and outcome targets for managing the overall care of a specific type of patient, e.g., from pre-admission to post-discharge for patients receiving inpatient care. Clinical pathways often are intended to maintain or improve quality of care and decrease costs of patient care in particular diagnosis-related groups.
Cloud Computing: The practice of using network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data.
Coordinated Care Organizations: Health entities that bring together providers to deliver and coordinate health care for a certain population. They are rewarded for improving health, delivering quality care, and reducing costs.
Coordination of Benefits (COB): Rules and procedures that determine how health care claims are paid when someone is covered by more than one health insurance plan. Together, the health plans cannot pay more than the charge for the services.
Co-payment: A type of insurance policy where the insured pays a specified amount of out-of-pocket expenses for health care services such as doctor visits or prescriptions.
Cybersecurity: The practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks.
Data Portability: The ability to move data from one service provider to another in a usable format, without hindrance.
Deductible: The amount you pay for covered health care services before your insurance plan starts to pay.
Efficacy: The ability of a product or treatment to provide a beneficial effect (such as reduce symptoms, cure a disease) when studied under ideal conditions, for example, in a randomized controlled clinical trial.
EHR (Electronic Health Records): Digital version of a patient's paper chart, containing medical and treatment histories.
e-Prescribing: The process of electronically sending a prescription directly to a pharmacy from the point-of-care.
Evidence: The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. In healthcare, evidence is often gathered through studies and research to inform best practices.
Fee-for-Service (FFS): A payment model where services are unbundled and paid for separately. In healthcare, it gives an incentive for physicians to provide more treatments because payment is dependent on the quantity of care, rather than quality of care.
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources): A standard describing data formats and elements and an application programming interface for exchanging electronic health records.
Genomics: The study of genomes, including genes and their functions.
GIS (Geographic Information System): Tools for the capture, storage, manipulation, analysis, and visualization of spatial data. Spatial data contains information, usually in the form of a geographic coordinate system that gives data location relative to the earth’s surface. These spatial attributes enable previously disparate data sets to be integrated into a digital mapping environment.
Health Disparities: Differences in the presence of disease, health outcomes, or access to healthcare among different demographic groups.
Health Insurance Marketplace: A marketplace for health insurance plans that meet certain benefits standards, sometimes referred to as the Health Exchange.
Health Informatics: The interdisciplinary field that utilizes health information technology to improve health care.
Healthtech / Healthcare IT: Additional terms used for digital health.
Health Technology Assessment (HTA): The systematic evaluation of properties, effects, and/or impacts of healthcare technology. It may address the direct, intended consequences of technologies as well as their indirect, unintended consequences. Its main purpose is to inform technology-related policymaking in health care. HTA is conducted by interdisciplinary groups using explicit analytical frameworks drawing from a variety of methods.
HDHP (High-Deductible Health Plan): A health insurance plan with lower premiums and higher deductibles than a traditional health plan. Being covered by an HDHP is also a requirement for having a health savings account.
HHS (Department of Health and Human Services): The United States government’s principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services.
HIE (Health Information Exchange): The mobilization of health care information electronically across organizations within a region or community.
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): US legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information.
HL7 (Health Level Seven International): A set of international standards for transfer of clinical and administrative data between software applications used by various healthcare providers.
HMO (Health Maintenance Organization): A type of health insurance plan that usually limits coverage to care from doctors who work for or contract with the HMO. It generally won't cover out-of-network care except in an emergency.
HRA (Health Reimbursement Arrangement): An employer-funded plan that reimburses employees for incurred medical expenses that are not covered by the company's standard insurance plan.
Incidence: The occurrence, rate, or frequency of a disease or health-related event in a population over a specific period of time.
Interoperability: The ability of different information systems, devices, and applications to access, exchange, integrate, and cooperatively use data.
Intervention: A type of treatment, preventive measure, or test intended to improve the outcome of patients with a particular condition or risk factor.
IoMT (Internet of Medical Things): A connected infrastructure of medical devices, software applications, and health systems and services.
MCO (Managed Care Organization): A type of health insurance where all health services for an enrollee are coordinated by or through a primary care physician. The intention is to ensure the services provided are necessary and eliminate unnecessary costs.
MDDS (Medical Device Data System): Hardware or software products that transfer, store, convert formats, or display medical device data or medical imaging data.
Medicare: A federal program that provides health coverage if you are 65 or older or have certain qualifying disabilities.
Medicaid: A state and federal program that provides health coverage if you have a very low income.
MLR (Medical Loss Ratio): A metric used in managed health care and health insurance to measure medical costs as a percentage of premium revenues.
mHealth (Mobile Health): A dated term for the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices.
Morbidity: Refers to having a disease or a symptom of disease, or to the amount of disease within a population.
NLP (Natural Language Processing): A field of AI that enables computers to understand, interpret and generate human language.
PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems): Medical imaging technology which provides economical storage and convenient access to images from multiple modalities.
Payer: A public, private, or government organization that pays or insures health or medical expenses on behalf of beneficiaries or recipients.
PDT (Prescription Digital Therapeutics) / DTx (Digital Therapeutics): Software applications designed to directly treat diseases. These are often delivered through mobile apps and are typically prescribed by a healthcare provider.
Pharmacogenetics: The study of single gene interactions with drugs, including on metabolic variations that influence efficacy and toxicity.
PHI (Protected Health Information): Any information about health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that can be linked to a specific individual.
PICOTS: Formulation of an evidence question based on: Population (e.g., condition, disease severity/stage, comorbidities, risk factors, demographics), Intervention (e.g., technology type, regimen/dosage/frequency, technique/method of administration), Comparator (e.g., placebo, usual/standard care, active control), Outcomes (e.g., morbidity, mortality, quality of life, adverse events), Timing (e.g., duration/intervals of follow-up), and Setting (e.g., primary, inpatient, specialty, home care).
PHR (Personal Health Record): An electronic application for recording personal medical data that the individual patient controls and may make available to health providers.
Point of Care: The place where a healthcare service is delivered, which could be a hospital, clinic, patient's home, or elsewhere.
Population Health: The health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group.
Precision Medicine: An approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle.
Predictive Analytics: Statistical techniques including data mining, predictive modeling and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about the future.
Prevalence: The proportion of a particular population found to be affected by a medical condition (typically a chronic disease) at a specific time.
Provider: An individual or institution that provides medical services (like a doctor, hospital, or clinic).
Readmission: Being admitted to a hospital or health care facility after being treated and discharged for the same condition or as a result of a complication.
RPM (Remote Patient Monitoring): Technology to monitor patient health and clinical data remotely.
Risk Factor: Personal qualities or societal conditions that lead to the increased probability of a problem or problems developing
SaMD (Software as a Medical Device): Software intended to be used for one or more medical purposes without being part of a hardware medical device.
Quality Measures: Tools that help measure or quantify healthcare processes, outcomes, patient perceptions, and organizational structure associated with the ability to provide high-quality health care.
SAAS (Software as a Service): A software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted.
Safety-net provider(s): Individuals and organizations that provide healthcare to low-income and other vulnerable populations, including the uninsured and those covered by Medicaid. Major safety net providers include public hospitals and community health centers as well as teaching and community hospitals, private physicians, and other providers who deliver a substantial amount of care to these populations.
Self-Insured: A term used to describe when an employer assumes the financial risk for providing health care benefits to its employees.
SDOH (Social Determinants of Health): Conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes.
Surveillance: In public health terms, surveillance means the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data. This activity also involves timely dissemination of the data and use for public health programs.
Telehealth: The use of digital information and communication technologies to access health care services remotely.
Telemedicine: The practice of caring for patients remotely when the patient and provider are not physically present.
Tertiary Care: Specialized consultative healthcare, usually for inpatients and on referral from a primary or secondary health professional, in a facility that has personnel and facilities for advanced medical investigation and treatment, such as a tertiary referral hospital.
UX (User Experience): A person's emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service.
VR (Virtual Reality): The use of computer technology to create a simulated environment.
Wearables / Wearable Tech: Electronic technology or devices incorporated into items that can be worn on a body. These wearable devices are capable of sensing body signals such as vital signs, and sending the data wirelessly to be monitored.
Years of Potential Life Lost (YPLL): A measure of premature death, or death that occurs before age 75, which is the average life span. This measure is useful for assessing the impact of a particular public health problem on the economy in terms of lost work years and earnings, and on family life in terms of impact on surviving spouses and children. It should be noted that a large percentage of the causes of YPLL are preventable through behavior modification, lifestyle changes, and substance abuse reduction.