Terminology

Clinical concepts and other content used to code CQL can be stored in the CQL Editor.

This allows the CQL editor to autocomplete with the codes stored within it when writing. These codes are referred to as concepts or codes in the CQL editor. This aligns with the terminology concept in FHIR.

This is CQL editor autocomplete in action:

The benefits of auto-completion include:

• Minimize errors when writing CQL
• See the definition of these concepts
• Converting the CQL to a human-readable format later (Parsing)

Concepts

Concepts can be clinical or non-clinical content, but the purpose of these concepts or terminology is to standardize the CQL code. This helps eliminate ambiguity when different authors are writing CQL, especially when multiple CQL files are involved in a single project.

These concepts are stored in FHIR format, in a resource known as a CodeSystem. Within the CodeSystem, they are stored as concepts.

Your collection of concepts in one or more CodeSystems is known as the Data Dictionary.

INFO

If you are not familiar with FHIR CodeSystem, read about CodeSystems in the FHIR documentation.