Patient Safety Metadata

The United States Health Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) is a metadata registry of health care-related data standards. The formation and maintenance of this registry has been a collaborative effort among several health information organizations and Federal agencies which have recognized the need to maintain a long term Internet-based registry of data standards. For 10 years, USHIK has provided a single axis of continuity for various approved standards, elements, code sets, references, and additional artifacts at the Federal level. The USHIK registry supports these initiatives and participating Federal Government health care agencies by cataloging and providing a platform for maintaining and harmonizing standardized, approved data artifacts across multiple organizations, agencies, and entities. AHRQ is responsible for the metadata repository, while USHIK provides the mechanism for storing, maintaining, and sharing the metadata components. The main objectives of the project were to:

• Maintain the metadata registry.
• Support the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP).
• Support AHRQ's Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS).
• Provide support for external agencies.

USHIK project staff facilitated implementation and usage of these components and the component-based architectures. In addition they facilitated the sharing of information exchange requirements through standards-based, reusable, secure, portable, and interoperable technology standards.

Project efforts further established commonly understood classifications for health data elements, identified duplicative data resources, and enabled information sharing among agencies. AHRQ oversaw the focused data efforts to ensure that all appropriate points of integration were identified.

In April 2010, the Common Formats USHIK portal was released. This has allowed the USHIK community, including researchers, systems developers, policymakers, clinicians, and the general public, access to the Common Formats metadata in USHIK.  Specific functionality implemented in support of the Common Formats portal in USHIK during 2010 included tools to load and update Common Formats data in USHIK, the capability to export Common Formats metadata from USHIK in a variety of convenient formats, and the support of online functionality including help pages and a glossary customized for the Common Formats metadata. In addition, the USHIK team provided ongoing support to the CQuIPS team as their Patient Safety initiatives evolved.