Core concepts

This page describes the major concepts related to the Ontology in Awell.

Resource

A resource defines a specific behaviour in your care flows or a specific type of healthcare data.

For example you may build a Depression screener care flow with an Intake track that includes a Patient Intake Questionnaire to be filled by the patient and computes a PHQ-9 score. This would result in:

• A top level Depression screener CareFlow resource
• An Intake Track resource
• A Patient intake Questionnaire resource
• A PHQ-9 Observation resource

Property

A property defines a specific characteristic of a resource. It has a name which defines what that characteristic represents, and a value which defines what that characteristic is.

Let's look at some properties for the Observation resource for example:

• The code property defines what was observed using an external terminology system like LOINC or SNOMED CT.
• The value property holds the actual result of the observation.
• The effective property defines the clinically relevant time or period for the observation.

Semantic properties

Some properties contain semantic information about a resource. This category of properties is referred to as a Semantic Property and is mostly frequently used when you want to search for data when designing care flows.

Let's say for example that you are building a care flow related to depression and want to create treatment activities that are relevant only for patients that are likely to be depressed. When you search for the term depression we can find the PHQ-9 Observation thanks to its code property as it contains information about what the observation measures (Loinc 44249-1: "PHQ-9 quick depression assessment panel").

Actionable properties

Some properties contain values that can be used to drive the logic in a care flow or tailor its content. This category of properties is referred to as an Actionable Property.

Building up on the previous example, once you've identified that the PHQ-9 observation has the information that you need, you can configure treatment activities that will only be activated when the observation value (Actionable Property of an Observation) is higher greater or equal to 10, which indicates a moderate or higher level of depression.

Data Store

The collection of Resources that describes all the healthcare data available in your account. This evolves with the care flows that you build and the systems that you connect to Awell.

Data Lineage

A visualisation that shows where the data comes from for a given Resource.