Data Model Conventions

There are a number of implicit and explicit conventions that have been adopted in the CDM. Developers of methods that run against the CDM need to understand these conventions.

General

The OMOP CDM is platform-independent. Data types are defined generically using ANSI SQL data types (VARCHAR, INTEGER, FLOAT, DATE, DATETIME, CLOB). Precision is provided only for VARCHAR. It reflects the minimal required string length and can be expanded within a CDM instantiation. The CDM does not prescribe the date and datetime format. Standard queries against CDM may vary for local instantiations and date/datetime configurations.

Tables

For the tables of the main domains of the CDM it is imperative that concepts used are strictly limited to the domain. For example, the CONDITION_OCCURRENCE table contains only information about conditions (diagnoses, signs, symptoms), but no information about procedures. Not all source coding schemes adhere to such rules. For example, ICD-9-CM codes, which contain mostly diagnoses of human disease, also contain information about the status of patients having received a procedure. The ICD-9-CM code V20.3 'Newborn health supervision' defines a continuous procedure and is therefore stored in the PROCEDURE_OCCURRENCE table.

Fields

Variable names across all tables follow one convention:

Notation|Description ---------------------|-------------------------------------------------- |_SOURCE_VALUE|Verbatim information from the source data, typically used in ETL to map to CONCEPT_ID, and not to be used by any standard analytics. For example, CONDITION_SOURCE_VALUE = '787.02' was the ICD-9 code captured as a diagnosis from the administrative claim.| |_ID|Unique identifiers for key entities, which can serve as foreign keys to establish relationships across entities. For example, PERSON_ID uniquely identifies each individual. VISIT_OCCURRENCE_ID uniquely identifies a PERSON encounter at a point of care.| |_CONCEPT_ID|Foreign key into the Standardized Vocabularies (i.e. the standard_concept attribute for the corresponding term is true), which serves as the primary basis for all standardized analytics. For example, CONDITION_CONCEPT_ID = 31967 contains the reference value for the SNOMED concept of 'Nausea'| |_SOURCE_CONCEPT_ID|Foreign key into the Standardized Vocabularies representing the concept and terminology used in the source data, when applicable. For example, CONDITION_SOURCE_CONCEPT_ID = 45431665 denotes the concept of 'Nausea' in the Read terminology; the analogous CONDITION_CONCEPT_ID might be 31967, since SNOMED-CT is the Standardized Vocabulary for most clinical diagnoses and findings.| |_TYPE_CONCEPT_ID|Delineates the origin of the source information, standardized within the Standardized Vocabularies. For example, DRUG_TYPE_CONCEPT_ID can allow analysts to discriminate between 'Pharmacy dispensing' and 'Prescription written'|

Vocabulary

Concepts

Concepts in the Common Data Model are derived from a number of public or proprietary terminologies such as SNOMED-CT and RxNorm, or custom generated to standardize aspects of observational data. Both types of Concepts are integrated based on the following rules:

Vocabularies

Domains

Concept Classes

Concept Relationships

Relationship Table

Concept Synonyms

Concept Ancestor

Source to Concept Map

Drug Strength

Mapping

Representing content as Concepts

In CDM data tables the meaning of the content of each record is represented using Concepts. Concepts are stored with their CONCEPT_ID as foreign keys to the CONCEPT table in the Standardized Vocabularies, which contains Concepts necessary to describe the healthcare experience of a patient. If a Standard Concept does not exist or cannot be identified, the Concept with the CONCEPT_ID 0 is used, representing a non-existing or un-mappable concept.

Records in the CONCEPT table contain all the detailed information about it (name, domain, class etc.). Concepts, Concept Relationships and other information relating to Concepts is contained in the tables of the Standardized Vocabularies.

Concept IDs and Source Values

Many tables contain equivalent information multiple times: As a Source Value, a Source Concept and as a Standard Concept.

Source Values are only provided for convenience and quality assurance (QA) purposes. Source Values and Source Concepts are optional, while Standard Concepts are mandatory. Source Values may contain information that is only meaningful in the context of a specific data source.

General Concepts and Type Concepts

Type Concepts (ending in _TYPE_CONCEPT_ID) and general Concepts (ending in _CONCEPT_ID) are part of many tables. The former are special Concepts with the purpose of indicating where the data are derived from in the source. For example, the Type Concept field can be used to distinguish a DRUG_EXPOSURE record that is derived from a pharmacy-dispensing claim from one indicative of a prescription written in an electronic health record (EHR).

Time span of available data

Data tables for clinical data contain a datetime stamp (ending in _DATETIME, _START_DATETIME or _END_DATETIME), indicating when that clinical event occurred. As a rule, no record can be outside of a valid OBSERVATION_PERIOD time period. Clinical information that relates to events that happened prior to the first OBSERVATION_PERIOD will be captured as a record in the OBSERVATION table as 'Medical history' (CONCEPT_ID = 43054928), with the OBSERVATION_DATETIME set to the first OBSERVATION_PERIOD_START_DATE of that patient, and the VALUE_AS_CONCEPT_ID set to the corresponding CONCEPT_ID for the condition/drug/procedure that occurred in the past. No data occurring after the last OBSERVATION_PERIOD_END_DATE can be valid records in the CDM. * When mapping source data to the CDM, if time is unknown the default time of 00:00:00 should be chosen.

Source Values, Source Concept Ids, and Standard Concept Ids

Each table contains fields for Source Values, Source Concept Ids, and Standard Concept Ids.

The following provide conventions for processing source data using these three fields in each domain:

When processing data where the source value is either free text or a reference to a coding scheme that is not contained within the Standardized Vocabularies:

When processing your data where Source Value is a reference to a coding scheme contained within the Standardized Vocabularies:

Each Standard CONCEPT_ID field has a set of allowable CONCEPT_ID values. The allowable values are defined by the domain of the concepts. For example, there is a domain concept of 'Gender', for which there are only two allowable standard concepts of practical use (8507 - 'Male', 8532- 'Female') and one allowable generic concept to represent a standard notion of 'no information' (concept_id = 0). This 'no information' concept should be used when there is no mapping to a standard concept available or if there is no information available for that field. The exceptions are MEASUREMENT.VALUE_AS_CONCEPT_ID, OBSERVATION.VALUE_AS_CONCEPT_ID, MEASUREMENT.UNIT_CONCEPT_ID, OBSERVATION.UNIT_CONCEPT_ID, MEASUREMENT.OPERATOR_CONCEPT_ID, and OBSERVATION.MODIFIER_CONCEPT_ID, which can be NULL if the data do not contain the information (THEMIS issue #11).

There is no constraint on allowed CONCEPT_IDs within the SOURCE_CONCEPT_ID fields.

Custom SOURCE_TO_CONCEPT_MAP

When the source data uses coding systems that are not currently in the Standardized Vocabularies (e.g. ICPC codes for diagnoses), the convention is to store the mapping of such source codes to Standard Concepts in the SOURCE_TO_CONCEPT_MAP table. The codes used in the data source can be recorded in the SOURCE_VALUE fields, but no SOURCE_CONCEPT_ID will be available.

Custom source codes are not allowed to map to Standard Concepts that are marked as invalid.



OHDSI/DDLgeneratr documentation built on March 10, 2021, 1:44 a.m.