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Concept Library Documentation

Overview

The concept library is a system for storing, managing, sharing, and documenting clinical code lists in health research. The specific goals of this work are:

• Store code lists along with metadata that captures important information about quality, author, etc.
• Store version history and provide a way to unambiguously reference a particular version of a code list.
• Allow programmatic interaction with code lists via an API, so that they can be directly used in queries, statistical scripts, etc.
• Provide a mechanism for sharing code lists between projects and organizations.

Access

The Concept Library is currently available to users of the SAIL Databank. Log in using your SAIL credentials to the following sites:

External: conceptlibrary.saildatabank.com

Internal: conceptlibrary.sail.ukserp.ac.uk (enter this address in your web browser inside the SAIL gateway).

General Information

Tutorials

Why use this tool?

A significant aspect of research using routinely collected health records is defining how concepts of interest (including conditions, treatments, symptoms, etc.) will be measured. This typically involves identifying sets of clinical codes that map to a variable that the researcher wants to measure, and sometimes a set of rules as well (e.g. a sufferer from a disease may be defined as someone who has a diagnosis code from list A and a medication from list B, but excluding anyone who has a code from list C). A large part of the analysis work may involve consulting clinicians, investigating the data, and creating and testing definitions of clinical concepts to be used.

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