A pharmacy claim is an invoice sent to a health insurer after a patient receives a diagnosis/prescription from their provider. It provides details on the services the patient has received and the associated charges set by the doctor or facility. It often includes drug name, dosage form, drug strength, fill date, days of supply, financial information and de-identified patient and prescriber codes, allowing for longitudinal tracking of medication refill patterns and changes in medications.

Closed payer claims data is derived from the insurance provider (or payer) and captures nearly all events that occur during a patient’s enrollment period, including medical and pharmacy visits and transactions for both retail and specialty settings. Leaving very few gaps in the patient journey, closed claims data can be leveraged to understand a more robust timeline of all events in all settings of care, crucial for many types of outcomes research.

Lab data provides demographic, test type, prescriber and condition, as well as results, for both diagnostic and screening/preventive purposes. Lab data is associated with LOINC codes (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes ) for laboratory tests and results.

Electronic medical records (EMR) are digitized versions of a patient’s health record or medical chart. Today they provide information in the format of a CDA (Clinical Document Architecture) which has defined structured fields that include demographics, medical history, encounters, problem lists, medication history, treatment history, procedural data, test, vitals etc.

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. They may include information on economic stability, education access, healthcare access, food and housing stability and other social determinant factors.