Baseline data set

Discovery Data Service contains health and care-related data.

These articles describe the nature of the types of data processed by the data service. 

In addition to reading these articles, the reader can visit the information model viewer at [x] which enables the entire information model to be explored, including the ontology, the data model, and the various code sets and data sets that have been developed.

Overview

Each main data type is called an entity. 

The entities described here are derived from health records. A health record consists of a set of "entries", each entry describing either an event that has occurred, an event that might occur, or a state. In addition, entries contain references to external things, often organised into Directories. Thus an entity is either a type of entry or a type of thing that the entry refers to.

The approach to categorising the data types has been heavily influenced by HL7 FHIR. In this approach, entries are roughly categorised according to the type of business process that the entry describes.

Within the full Discovery information model, entity types are semantically defined in an ontology, and the data model supports unlimited but ontologically controlled extensibility. This provides the potential for holding data at any granular level of specialisation.

Only the broad categories are described here, for the purposes of information. The information model itself describes the extent of properties and their values that are supported at a particular point in time.
 

Generic entities

This section deals with entities that are relevant to all parts of the model.

Provenance

Discovery tracks data throughout the pipeline including the receipt of the data and the transformation of the data.
Discovery also retains any provenance related information relating to the item as is was originally recorded in the publisher system, including any provenance information that the publisher may have.
Discovery itself, broadly speaking, follows the W3C PROV standard in that it records Entities, activities and agents and any number of relationships between them based on sub-properties of the main W3C provenance relationships.

 

 

The main entity types and main properties are listed here:

Provenance entity

This is a reference to a stored item of data which is of sufficient importance to require a record of provenance. The data may be a record entry, or in the case of a deleted record, the previous entry. In addition, it may point to messages or files that were stored or created as part of the processing of health data.

Property	Description
Entity identifier	The idenfifier of the entity in question providing sufficient information to determine the type and location
Attributes	A set of attribute value pairs that provide meta data about the entity, specific usually to the type of entity.  These are modelled in the information model

 

 

 

 

Provenance activity

In order to have generated some data, or changed some data, or deleted some data, some form of activity has taken place. This entity holds the nature of the activity that took place and the date and time it took place. Provenance can be illustrated by providing a timeline of all linked activities, operating as a chain going back in time.

Property	Description
Activity type	The type of activity
Start time	The date and time the activity started
End time	The date and time the activity ended

 

 

 

 

Provenance agent

This is a person or thing that performed an activity, or is responsible for an entity. Agents operate in the context of roles, which are represented as properties of the relationship between the agent and the activity.

Property	Description
Agent type	The type of agent involved
Agent identifier	The identifier of the agent which might be a DBID or URL

 

   

 

Main Provenance relationships

This is a high-level listing of the types of relationships between the provenance objects. An ontology of relationships can be viewed in the information model viewer

Relationship	Description
Derived from	Links an entity to another entity from which it was derived
Generated by	Links an entity to the activity that generated it
Attributed to	Links an entity to an agent that the entity is attributed to e.g. the author or owner
Was associated with	Links an activity to the agent that it was associated with, e.g. who performed it, including the role the agent was performing in
Acted on behalf of	Links an agent to the organisation (or other agent) that an agent acted on behalf of

 

 

 

 

 

Health Event

A health event is an abstract class referring to an entry that represents something that has happened, or may happen, at a point in time, or over a period of time, related to the health or care or a person.