Creating and Managing Locally Used Sources

####What are sources?

Sources get to the core of what OCL is all about. Sources are packages of clinical concepts. The most well known are internationally recognized packages of standardized terminology, like CIEL, SNOMED, ICD-10 and CPT. Sources can also be smaller packages: a Ministry of Health's government-mandated source of terms is an example.

####I have my own set of data elements- my own source- that my ministry of health/government/donor/network has mandated we collect. Can I upload that source? How does OCL help me manage that source?

Again, this gets to the core functionality of OCL. Users can upload their proprietary sources to OCL, and then map them to internationally recognized standards. Mapping your terminology to standardized terminology increases the interoperability of data.

#####To create concepts

1. Go to your account profile by clicking your username.
2. xxxx need to add more about this once it’s live, including eventual screenshots/training video

#####To map your concepts to other concepts in OCL, follow these steps.

1. xxxxxx
2. xxxxxx

Internal mapping External mapping

####Why is this important? What does mapping my sources to other sources allow me to do?

This gets to the issues of interoperability and easier comparisons across disparate systems. OCL will foster participation and engagement of a community-supported approach and in the population of an open-source, cloud-based toolset. The resultant standards-linked dictionary will facilitate stronger M&E, enabling targeted quality improvement initiatives and performance improvement that will lead to a better quality of care across healthcare and public health systems, resulting in better health outcomes, a better experience of care and reduced costs.

By managing and sharing comparable data elements, communities of practice can benchmark previously incompatible data sets against each other. Direct comparisons of data will support analyses about the comparative efficacy of interventions, and accelerate convergence on best practices.