ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the concepts and terminology commonly encountered in EHR research. First, the chapter covers healthcare concepts with a specific focus on clinical workflow and documentation events in the EHR. This is followed by a discussion of terminology and data standards used in medicine, such as SNOMED and ICD codes, as well as HL7 messaging for data sharing. Next, the chapter turns to key concepts in information technology and informatics needed to understand the architecture of the EHR. A high-level overview of epidemiology and statistics follows which provides the basis of the terms and concepts used throughout this text. The chapter then addresses the question of what EHR data look like, as they can appear quite different from other epidemiological data sources. The chapter concludes with an overview of hardware and software requirements for conducting EHR-based research as well as disseminating the results through publication and presentation.
