July 19, 2017 — The American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC) recently published the "2017 AHA/ACC Key Data Elements for Ambulatory Electronic Health Records in Pediatric and Congenital Cardiology" in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).
This document creates the first extensive data dictionary, with data elements and definitions, specifically for use in the outpatient — or ambulatory — domain of pediatric and congenital cardiology.
The need for a master set of data elements and definitions is of topical interest for the pediatric and congenital heart disease clinician where data sharing is critical to identify best practices, develop evidence-based guidelines and determine statistical significance in patient populations. There is a wide range of disease processes across a relatively small set of patients in pediatric and congenital heart disease; this fact is in contrast to adult cardiac disease where there is a large population of patients who experience a more homogenous set of disease processes.
For more information: www.onlinejacc.org