About Sources

####What are sources? Sources are packages of clinical concepts. OCL’s available sources include a curated health terminology dataset from our primary academic partner (the CIEL dictionary) and international standards such as ICD-10, SNOMED, WHO Indicator Registry, and US Meaningful Use Clinical Quality Indicators.

####What does having access to the sources allow me to do?

These pre-populated dictionaries and indicator registries allow users to subscribe to and utilize existing standards sets. Once a user has subscribed to a source, they can search and subset the source.

####Why do I need to subscribe to existing sources? Existing sources- like CIEL, ICD-10, and SNOMED- are well-mapped and allow data collected using their terminology to be highly interoperable across many systems. By subscribing to these sources and mapping your terminology to them, you are able to strengthen the interoperability of your own data.

Different facilities, ministries of health, donors, or other stakeholders may use customized dictionaries- collections of concepts- including proprietary and standardized concepts- that serve the needs of their populations. It is essential that the concepts in these dictionaries can be mapped to existing standards so that the data collected is interoperable, or usable by disparate groups.

Careers have been dedicated to developing the internationally-recognized standards sets. Thousands of organizations, of all sizes, rely on access to these standardized sets to determine what data to collect, when to collect it, how to collect it, and how to analyze it.

####Subsetting Sources

A subset is a curated collection of concepts, pulled from the sources available on OCL. "Subsetting" a source means choosing and extracting concepts from existing sources to make a customized "subset" of concepts for use. For example, you may want to create- or subset- a collection of concepts that deal with ovarian cancer. Through OCL, you can pick and choose concepts from across the available sources, and create a domain-specific subset of concepts for use.

The resultant subset is called a collection. Collections may be domain specific (e.g. oncology), or health system specific (e.g. CHW-provided postpartum care).

#####Further Reading Collections

Learn how to

• add to a source Adding to Sources