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When creating a new concept, use the "similar concepts" resources and/or search your dictionary carefully to be certain that there is not already a concept that meets your needs.

• Create synonyms (alternative, valid names) for your concepts.  This helps people find the concept and will help you avoid creating duplicateswhen you create a concept, to avoid re-creating a duplicate of that concept in the future. This helps avoid duplicate concepts with different phrasings.

Concept Naming

• Only use alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers) and simple punctuation sparingly – e.g., comma (","), parentheses ("(" and ")"), and forward slash ("/").
  • Descriptions may contain non-alphanumeric characters
• Sentence-casing case is recommended – i.e., . This is either all lowercase or uppercase first letter (ie. 'Blue suede shoes').
  • Avoid using all uppercase.
  • Make exceptions for well known names (ie. EKG, HIV, pH)
• For drug names, some people use Tall Man Lettering to uppercase certain parts of drug names that are confused by providers, since this has been proven to reduce medication errors.
• Be consistent! consistent. Having a consistent naming convention for concepts is a must.
• Add standard SNOMED, ICD10, or RxNORM maps to concepts. Do this as part of creating the concept.
  • Consistency in naming helps users predict concept names and makes the dictionary much easier to manage.
• Always work with your end users to ensure the your concept names make sense to them and match their workflows.

Classes and datatypes

• Don't create boolean concepts for things like "Cough for last 3 weeks" = Yes/No. Instead have Symptom Present (coded), Symptom Absent (coded), and "Cough for last 3 weeks" (as an answer)
  Consider importing concepts (e.g. from CIEL/MVP) when suitable <https://wiki.openmrs.org/x/ww4JAg>

Design for Re-use

Well-designed concepts can be used in several different contexts (e.g., multiple, different forms).

• Avoid making your symptoms & diagnoses concepts boolean; rather, use datatype N/A for these and use them as answers (not questions).  This promotes re-use of these concepts.
  • POOR DESIGN: a boolean "HIV" concept answered yes/no based on whether or not the patient has HIV.
  • GOOD DESIGN: a coded  "DIAGNOSES" or "PROBLEM ADDED" concept that is answered with the concept HIV (the HIV concept has datatype N/A).

Concept naming

• Always work with your end users to ensure the your concept names make sense to them and match their workflows
  • .

Modeling diagnoses

Here are some notes/conversations related to concept modeling that may be helpful resources when confronting modeling issues.

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