Terminology: Treat meaning as a product
Make terminology an explicit product with governance, distribution, and tests—so meanings don’t drift across implementations.
Typical challenges in this area:
- ValueSet expansions differ across environments or over time
- Local codes proliferate without a strategy
- Mappings become stale and are not regression-tested
- Terminology performance and caching cause non-deterministic results
The Terminology provide essential capabilities:
Three-Layer Terminology Model
Separate CodeSystem/ValueSet/ConceptMap roles to reduce semantic drift.
Key Benefits: - Semantic stability - Better mapping
Terminology as a Service (TaaS) Gate
Run $expand/$validate-code/$lookup in CI against a pinned terminology environment.
Key Benefits: - Catches drift early - Cross-product consistency
Terminology Release Train
Coordinate terminology change with IG releases using deprecation windows and diffs.
Key Benefits: - Predictable adoption - Fewer breaking changes