TOPIC
Glossary terms
71 entries across the knowledge base
Synthea (Synthetic Patient Generator)Open-source software that generates realistic but entirely fake patient records — FHIR, C-CDA, CSV — so you can build and test health systems without touching real PHI.concept · 6 min · foundationopenEHRModel the clinic once, store forever: archetype-based records where clinical models live outside the software.concept · 7 min · practitionerMedplumAn open-source, FHIR-native developer platform — a headless backend with a FHIR datastore, auth, subscriptions and automation — for building healthcare apps fast.concept · 6 min · foundationHAPI FHIRThe de-facto open-source FHIR implementation for Java: parsers, a client, and a full server that many health systems and vendors build on.concept · 6 min · foundationDICOMThe standard that runs medical imaging end to end — file format, network protocol, and workflow in one.concept · 7 min · foundation
UCUM unitsOne unambiguous code for every unit of measure — because mg/dL vs mmol/L confusion is a patient-safety issue, not a formatting nit.concept · 6 min · foundationSnowstorm (SNOMED Terminology Server)SNOMED International's open-source terminology server — search, browse and query SNOMED CT with the Expression Constraint Language, behind a FHIR terminology API.concept · 6 min · foundationLOINCThe universal codes for lab tests and observations — answering 'which question was asked?' while SNOMED answers 'what was found?'concept · 7 min · foundationICD-11WHO's classification for counting disease — fully digital, API-first, with traditional-medicine chapters that now include Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani.concept · 7 min · foundation
WhiteRabbit & Rabbit-in-a-Hat (OMOP ETL design)OHDSI tools that profile your source database and help you design the ETL that maps it to the OMOP Common Data Model — the planning stage of data harmonization.concept · 6 min · foundationOMOP CDMOne common shape for observational health data — load your EHR into it and every OHDSI analysis ever written runs on your data.concept · 6 min · practitionerOHDSI ATLASAn open-source web app for designing and running observational studies on OMOP data — cohorts, characterization, incidence and prediction — without writing SQL by hand.concept · 6 min · foundation
scispaCy (Biomedical NLP)A lightweight, Python-native library for biomedical and clinical text: fast NER, abbreviation detection and UMLS entity linking, built on spaCy.concept · 6 min · foundationRetrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)Ground an LLM's answer in your own documents: retrieve relevant passages first, then generate with them in context — citations included.concept · 7 min · foundationPrompt engineeringDesigning the input is designing the behaviour: instructions, context, examples and output contracts that make LLMs reliable.concept · 6 min · foundationModel Context Protocol (MCP)The open standard that lets AI assistants plug into tools and data sources — USB-C for the agent era.concept · 6 min · foundationMedCAT (Medical Concept Annotation Toolkit)A Python toolkit that extracts and links clinical concepts to UMLS/SNOMED using self-supervised learning — strong on messy, real EHR free text.concept · 6 min · foundationLLMOps & evalsThe operations discipline for AI features: versioned prompts, automated evals, monitoring and cost control — because 'it seemed fine in the demo' is not a deployment strategy.concept · 6 min · practitionerLLM fundamentalsWhat a large language model actually does, in the only terms that matter clinically: it predicts plausible text. Everything useful and everything dangerous about it follows from that one fact.article · 7 min · foundationGuardrails & safetyThe layers around a model that keep it in-scope, grounded and resistant to manipulation — engineering, not hope.concept · 6 min · practitionerFederated learningTrain one model across many hospitals without any of them sharing patient data — the model travels, the data stays.concept · 6 min · practitionerEmbeddings & vector databasesTurn text into coordinates in meaning-space, then search by closeness — the index that makes semantic search and RAG work.concept · 6 min · foundationApache cTAKES (Clinical NLP)An open-source engine that reads clinical free text and extracts coded concepts — symptoms, diagnoses, medications, procedures — mapped to UMLS, SNOMED CT and RxNorm.concept · 7 min · foundationAmbient documentationThe AI scribe: listen to the visit, draft the note — attacking healthcare's documentation burden at its source.concept · 6 min · foundationAI agents & tool useAn LLM in a loop: reason, call a tool, observe the result, repeat — turning a text generator into a system that does things.concept · 7 min · foundation
WebSocketOne TCP connection, kept open, messages flowing both ways — how dashboards get live vitals without polling.concept · 5 min · foundationWebRTCThe browser standard for real-time audio, video and data — the engine inside nearly every telemedicine consultation.concept · 6 min · foundationWebGPUModern GPU access from the browser — compute shaders and fast graphics that make client-side medical imaging and on-device ML practical.concept · 5 min · practitionerWebAssembly (WASM) & WASIA portable, sandboxed binary format: run near-native code safely in browsers and servers — capability-based security included.concept · 6 min · practitionergRPCA fast binary RPC framework over HTTP/2 — how backend microservices call each other when JSON-over-REST is too slow or too loose.concept · 5 min · practitioner
Time-series databasesStorage engines built for timestamped streams — millions of vitals per hour, compressed, with time-window queries that stay fast.concept · 6 min · practitionerScalability & cachingCaching is the cheapest performance win in computing and the most dangerous one in healthcare — because a stale allergy list looks exactly like a fresh one.article · 7 min · practitionerReliability / SRESite reliability engineering treats uptime as a product feature with a budget. In healthcare the budget maths gets uncomfortable, because the cost of downtime isn't revenue — it's a nurse with a paper drug chart.article · 7 min · practitionerObservabilityLogs, metrics and traces designed in from the start — so 'why is it slow?' has an answer instead of a war room.concept · 6 min · foundationInfrastructure as CodeDescribe the infrastructure in a file, version it, review it, apply it. In health IT the real prize isn't speed — it's that your environment becomes auditable evidence rather than folklore.article · 6 min · practitionerContainers & KubernetesPackage the app with its world, then let an orchestrator keep fleets of them running — the default shape of modern health-IT infrastructure.concept · 6 min · foundationCloud (AWS · Azure · GCP) for healthThe cloud question in healthcare is never 'which provider'. It's data residency, the shared responsibility model, and the BAA nobody read — because the provider's compliance is not your compliance.article · 7 min · practitionerCI/CDMerge, test, ship as a pipeline: continuous integration proves every change; continuous delivery makes releasing boring.concept · 6 min · foundationApache KafkaA durable, replayable event log for high-volume streams — the backbone when device telemetry outgrows a simple broker.concept · 6 min · practitioner
Zero trustNever trust the network, always verify the request — the security model for a world where the perimeter already failed.concept · 6 min · foundationHomomorphic encryptionCompute on data while it stays encrypted — analyse what you are never allowed to see.concept · 6 min · expertDifferential privacyA mathematical privacy guarantee: published statistics barely change whether or not you are in the dataset — provably.concept · 6 min · expertDIDs & verifiable credentialsCryptographically checkable claims — a nursing licence or a SIDHI certificate any employer can verify in seconds without calling anyone.concept · 6 min · practitioner
Sensors & devicesHow a physiological signal becomes a number in a chart — and why every step of that journey is a place the number can be wrong while looking perfectly normal.article · 7 min · foundationRTOSAn operating system that promises *when*, not just *what* — the software heart of infusion pumps, monitors and ventilators.concept · 6 min · practitionerRobotics fundamentalsSense, plan, act — the loop every robot runs. What the terms mean, what makes medical robotics different from factory robotics, and why 'autonomous surgery' is further away than the demos suggest.article · 6 min · foundationMQTTThe lightweight publish/subscribe protocol that moves device telemetry — the lingua franca of medical IoT.concept · 6 min · foundationIEEE 11073The standards family for how medical devices describe themselves and their measurements — the device-side counterpart to FHIR.concept · 6 min · practitionerEdge computingProcessing data where it is produced — at the bedside, gateway, or device — instead of round-tripping everything to the cloud.concept · 6 min · foundationDigital twinsA continuously updated virtual copy of a physical thing — a device, a ward, eventually a patient — you can query and simulate against.concept · 6 min · foundationControl systemsClosed-loop control in medicine: the machine measures, decides, and acts — repeatedly, without asking. The engineering is old and well understood; the question of who is accountable is not.article · 7 min · foundationCoAPHTTP's tiny cousin for constrained devices — request/response over UDP when even MQTT is too heavy.concept · 5 min · foundationBluetooth Low Energy & GATTHow your pulse oximeter actually talks to a phone: BLE radio plus the GATT data model of services and characteristics.concept · 6 min · foundationAssistive & surgical roboticsWhere medical robots actually are today: teleoperated surgical instruments and assistive devices — plus an honest look at what the evidence says versus what the marketing does.article · 7 min · foundation
TransistorsA tiny electrically-controlled switch and amplifier — the single invention that everything digital is built from, and the part that drives a motor or amplifies an ECG.concept · 4 min · foundationTeleoperation, degrees of freedom & end-effectorsHow a surgeon at a console moves a robot inside a patient: master–slave control, motion scaling, the joints that give a robot its dexterity (degrees of freedom), and the tool at the tip.concept · 5 min · foundationSensors & transducersHow a temperature, a pressure or a heartbeat becomes a number: the transducer that converts physiology to a voltage, then the chain that digitises it.concept · 5 min · foundationResistorsThe most common component on any board — it limits current and divides voltage, which is how a sensor's reading even becomes a number.concept · 3 min · foundationFeedback control & PIDHow a machine holds a target — a temperature, a dose rate, a joint angle — by constantly measuring the error and correcting. PID is the control algorithm running inside incubators, pumps and robots.concept · 5 min · foundationPrinted circuit boards (PCB)The green board everything is soldered to — and the copper traces that wire the components together. In a medical device, the PCB is also where reliability and electrical safety are designed in.concept · 4 min · foundationOperational amplifiers & biosignal amplificationThe triangle that turns a microvolt heartbeat into something a computer can read — and the instrumentation amplifier built from it that makes ECG and EEG possible.concept · 4 min · foundationMicrocontrollers — the brain of a deviceThe little computer-on-a-chip that runs the firmware inside a glucose meter, a wearable or an infusion pump: CPU, memory and the pins that touch the real world, all in one part.concept · 4 min · foundationAnatomy of a medical robotEvery robot — surgical, rehab, lab or delivery — is the same loop: sense, think, act, repeat. Here's how the hardware pieces you've met assemble into one.concept · 5 min · foundationLEDs & photodiodesDiodes that emit light, and diodes that detect it — paired across a fingertip, they are exactly how a pulse oximeter reads SpO₂.concept · 4 min · foundationInductors & coilsA coil that stores energy in a magnetic field — the part behind wireless charging of an implant, the gradient coils of an MRI, and the power supply inside every device.concept · 4 min · foundationDiodes & rectifiersA one-way valve for current — it turns AC into DC, protects a circuit from reversed batteries, and absorbs the kick from a motor or solenoid.concept · 3 min · foundationCapacitorsTwo plates that store charge in an electric field — the part that delivers a defibrillator's jolt and cleans up an ECG signal.concept · 4 min · foundationBatteries & power managementWhy a pacemaker lasts a decade and a wearable a day comes down to the same arithmetic: how much energy is stored versus how much the device sips. Power is the quiet constraint behind every device decision.concept · 4 min · foundationADC & DAC — turning signals into numbersThe converters at the border between the analog world and the computer: an ADC samples a waveform into numbers, a DAC turns numbers back into a signal. Sampling rate and resolution decide whether the data is any good.concept · 4 min · foundationActuators & motorsIf sensors are how a device feels, actuators are how it acts: the motors and valves that drive an infusion pump, move a surgical-robot joint, or close a prosthetic hand.concept · 4 min · foundation