Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics

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Changes from Vocabulary Version 4.0

The Standardized Vocabularies are undergoing a constant revision and improvement. Therefore, only significant structural changes are listed in the following.

** Changes to Tables **

Table	Nature of change
DOMAIN	Newly created reference table for all Domains. Please refer to the discussion of the Domains.
CONCEPT_CLASS	Newly created reference table for all Concept Classes of Concepts. Please refer to the discussion of the individual Vocabularies for detais.
SOURCE_TO_CONCEPT_MAP	No longer used for mapping of source codes to Standard Vocabularies. Instead, source codes have now a representation in the CONCEPT table, and these Source Concepts are mapped to Standard Concepts using records in the CONCEPT_RELATIONSHIP table “Maps to” and “Mapped from”. Please refer to the discussion of the mapping and the individual Vocabularies for detais.
COHORT_DEFINITION	Newly created reference table for the definition of Cohorts in the COHORT table. This table is not supported with standardized content, but for internal use at each CDM instance.
ATTRIBUTE_DEFINITION	Newly created reference table for the definition of Cohort Attributes in the COHORT_ATTRIBUTE table. This table is not supported with standardized content, but for internal use at each CDM instance.

** Changes to Fields **

Table	Field	Nature of change
CONCEPT and VOCABULARY	vocabulary_id	This is no longer a numerical but a character identifier of length 20. The character string refers to the Vocabulary in a human readable format for convenience of the analyst during querying. E.g., vocabulary_id 1 became vocabulary “SNOMED”, vocabulary_id 2 became “ICD9CM”. Please refer to the discussion of the Vocabularies.
CONCEPT	concept_class_id	This used to be a character field called concept_class containing Concept Class as a string. Now, it contains a 20 character identifier referring to the CONCEPT_CLASS table, similar to how Vocabularies are referred to in the vocabulary_id field. Please refer to the discussion of the individual Vocabularies for details.
CONCEPT	domain_id	This is a newly added field for a 20 character identifier referring to the DOMAIN table, similar to how Vocabularies are referred to in the vocabulary_id field. Please refer to the discussion of the Domains.
CONCEPT	standard_concept	This is a newly added field designating whether the Concept is a Standard Concept (“S”), a Classification Concept (“C”) or a Source Concept (NULL). Please refer to the discussion of how the Concept designation is used in practice.
CONCEPT	concept_level	This field used to designate the hierarchical level within a Vocabulary or Domain, and is no longer available. Hierarchical levels only work for strictly stratified hierarchies such as RxNorm or MedDRA, and are no longer supported. Concept Level 0 used to designate non-Standard Concepts, which now is captured in the standard_concept field and explained here.
VOCABULARY	vocabulary_reference	This is a newly added field referring to external documentation of the Vocabulary.
VOCABULARY	vocabulary_version	This is a newly added field capturing the version of the Vocabulary as indicated in the source.
VOCABULARY	vocabulary_concept_id	This is a newly added field referring to the Concept representing the Vocabulary.
CONCEPT_RELATIONSHIP and RELATIONSHIP	relationship_id	This is no longer a numerical but a character identifier of length 20. The character string refers to the Relationship in a human readable format for convenience of the analyst during querying. E.g., relationship_id 10 became “Subsumes”, relationship_id 353 became “Maps to”. Please refer to the discussion of the Vocabularies for details of the Concept Relationships.
RELATIONSHIP	relationship_concept_id	This is a newly added field referring to the Concept representing the Relationship.
CONCEPT_SYNONYM	language_concept_id	This is a newly added field referring to the Concept of the language used. Currently, only English is supported in the Standardized Vocabularies.
DRUG_STRENGTH	amount_unit_concept_id	This field used to be called amount_unit containing the unit as a character string. Now, it is a foreign key to the Unit Concept in the CONCEPT table.
DRUG_STRENGTH	numerator_value	This field used to be called enumerator_value.
DRUG_STRENGTH	numerator_unit_concept_id	This field used to be called enumerator_unit containing the unit as a character string. Now, it is a foreign key to the Unit Concept in the CONCEPT table.
DRUG_STRENGTH	denominator_unit_concept_id	This field used to be called denominator_unit containing the unit as a character string. Now, it is a foreign key to the Unit Concept in the CONCEPT table.