Defense-VA Data Dictionary is a Gift to the World

The agreement the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments quietly signed earlier this year to license the 3M Health Data Dictionary and provide access to its collection of 36 million clinical terms, concepts and definitions is open to not just Defense and VA clinicians, but doctors and hospitals around the world, the company acknowleged in a press release today.

This agreement is akin to solving the problem at the Tower of Babel -- only far more complex -- and the departments should have shouted it from the rooftops. I’m not exaggerating. It does for medicine what the Internet (another federal gift to the world) did for communications.

Dr. Hon Pak, the former chief information officer of the Army Medical Department and now chief executive officer of Diversinet, a mobile health care technology company, said in the 3M press release that the open data dictionary will provide a “common language of health care” and help boost adoption of electronic health record systems.

Defense and VA, according to internal documents, signed the data dictionary license pact with 3M in January and VA elliptically mentioned it in a statement of work buried inside a contract notice for a data mapping project at its hospital in Salt Lake City last week.

This is not the way to handle an announcement with implications for healthcare worldwide. I have more than a strong hunch that VA and Defense were hobbled by 3M, which is as close-lipped as the National Security Agency.

3M Healthcare put out its press release today after receiving a query from me on Monday. More still needs to be revealed about the open data dictionary, including the cost of the license and how clinicians can access it online.