Archives: Glossary

Standards Developed by the National Institute on Standards and Technology

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is equipment worn to minimize exposure to a variety of hazards. Examples of PPE include such items as gloves, foot and eye protection, protective hearing devices (earplugs, muffs), hard hats, respirators and full body suits. – Occupational Safety and Health Administration

“information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, either alone or when combined with other personal or identifying information that is linked or linkable to a specific individual. The definition of PII is not anchored to any single category of information or technology. Rather, it requires a case-by-case assessment of the specific risk that an individual can be identified.” – GSA

Population health management refers to the process of improving clinical health outcomes of a defined group of individuals through improved care coordination and patient engagement supported by appropriate financial and care models. – American Hospital Association

Medical care designed to optimize efficiency or therapeutic benefit for particular groups of patients, especially by using genetic or molecular profiling. – Oxford English Dictionary

A subset of individually identifiable health information that is held or maintained by covered entities or their business associates acting for the covered entity and protected under the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

Information that relates to:
– an individual’s physical or mental health or condition,
– the provision of health care to the individual, or
– the payment for the provision of health care to the individual,
and that identifies the individual or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe it can be used to identify the individual.

Individually identifiable health information includes many common identifiers (e.g., name, address, birth date, Social Security Number).

– HHS

Re-identification is the process by which anonymized personal data is matched with its true owner. In order to protect the privacy interests of consumers, personal identifiers, such as name and social security number, are often removed from databases containing sensitive information…Recently, however, computer scientists have revealed that this “anonymized” data can easily be re-identified, such that the sensitive information may be linked back to an individual. – Electronic Privacy Information Center

Redlining was the practice of outlining areas with sizable Black populations in red ink on maps as a warning to mortgage lenders, effectively isolating Black people in areas that would suffer lower levels of investment than their white counterparts.  – The Brookings Institute

RPA is an application of technology, governed by business logic and structured inputs, aimed at automating business processes.

“the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age that shape health. Social determinants of health include factors like socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood and physical environment, employment, and social support networks, as well as access to health care.” – Kaiser Family Foundation