Healthcare has no shortage of standards. We have code systems, information models, implementation guides, profiles, mappings and frameworks designed to help systems exchange information.

And still, meaning gets lost.

Perhaps because we often begin with the technical building blocks before asking what they were originally designed to protect.

A CodeSystem does more than provide a list of codes. It creates a shared way to identify concepts. A ValueSet does more than select codes. It determines which part of that language belongs in a particular context. A ConceptMap does more than connect two terminologies. It makes explicit how different ways of describing reality relate to one another.

These are not merely technical artefacts. They represent decisions about meaning.

Which concepts do we distinguish? Which values belong in this situation? When are two concepts equivalent? And what should happen when they are not?

Over the coming weeks, I want to explore these building blocks through a new series: Semantic Weekly.

Not as a glossary, and not by repeating what the standards already tell us. I want to look at why these concepts exist, which human or organisational problem they are trying to solve, and where meaning can still get lost even when the technology works exactly as designed.

Because data can travel without being understood. Systems can connect while their users still mean different things. And a code can arrive perfectly intact while the context around it disappears.

Perhaps semantic interoperability does not begin with exchanging more data.

Perhaps it begins with becoming more precise about what we mean.

Next week: CodeSystem

Before we can exchange meaning, someone has to define it.

#SemanticWeekly #SemanticInteroperability #HealthInformatics #DigitalHealth #Terminology