Glossary of Terms

TO BE UPDATED

• Aggregated Data. It is the aggregation of several data, of a specific population or study.
• Anonymised Data. Data from which the patient or clinical professionals cannot be identified by the recipient of the information.
• Architecture. The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution. [ISO/IEC 42010:2007]
• Catalogue. Most precisely: the "EMIF Catalogue" is the central repository and user interface for publication, edition and consultation of Databases available in the EMIF Platform.
• Data Descriptor. Text or numeral information associated to Data (commonly aliased as "meta data") or computed from the Data itself (commonly aliased as "indicator", "fingerprint", "data characteristic".
• Data User. Organization (institution) or individual making use of Data handled in the EMIF Platform, including Data Descriptors ("fingerprints"), for whatever purpose.
• Database. Data formatted according to EMIF Platform. Can be materialized as a single file, or a set of files in a format which can be handled by the EMIF Platform components.
• ETL. Extract, transform, load. A process to transform data, which is used in the data integration systems, and in data warehouse systems.
• Federated database. A collection of autonomous components that make their data available to other members of the federation through the publication of an export schema and access operations; there is no unified, central schema that encompasses the information available from the members of the federation.
• Fingerprint. An alias to "Data Descriptor".
• Harmonised Data. The harmonized data follow a consensus and are formatted in the same way. In the context of the Query and Analysis module: Data complying with a "model".
• Information. Human-interpretable signs, mostly visual (text, graphs and images), captured as output from Data.
• Modifier. A modifier modifies the data of the patients. This can be filter operations, e.g. outliers filters, or creates derived data, e.g., BMI from weight and length. Modifiers can be chained within a Module to perform subsequent analytical steps.
• Module. A module implements an analysis to create one or more analytical datasets.
• Original Data. Data, as maintained by the Data Source or any organization which collects the data, before inclusion in the EMIF Platform.