Concepts
A concept represents a single clinical idea or entity within a vocabulary. Each concept has a unique code within its vocabulary and includes human-readable descriptions, making it the fundamental building block of clinical terminologies.What is a Concept?
Concepts are the individual units of meaning within terminology systems. They represent specific clinical ideas, such as diseases, procedures, medications, or observations, in a standardized and machine-readable format. Core characteristics:- Unique identification: Each concept has a unique code within its vocabulary
- Human-readable: Includes display text and definitions for clinical users
- Multilingual support: Can include translations and alternative names
Concept Structure
A concept in Clinia contains the following properties:Property | Type | Description |
---|---|---|
vocabularyKey | code | Identifier of the containing vocabulary (read-only, provided as a URL parameter) |
code | code | Unique identifier within the vocabulary (read-only) |
definition | symbol | Detailed explanation of the concept’s clinical meaning |
designation | object | Alternative names and translations in different languages |
Managing Concepts
Creating a Concept
Use the upsert concept endpoint to create or update concepts:Retrieving Concepts
Get specific concepts by their code:Searching Concepts
Use the concept query endpoint to perform concept resolution, using Clinia’s operators and semantic search capabilities:Bulk Operations
Efficiently manage large sets of concepts using bulk operations:Concept Validation
Concepts are central to field validation at Clinia. Learn how to do vocabulary-based validation here.Related Concepts
Vocabularies
Learn about the containers that organize concepts into terminology systems
Clinical Terminology Standards
Understand the major terminology standards and their concept structures
Coding Data Type
See how concepts are represented in FHIR data structures
Field Validation
Explore how concepts enable clinical data validation
Ready to work with concepts? Start with the Concept API reference to manage your clinical concepts.