Patient Demographic and Session/Action Hierarchy

Patient Data and Session/Action Hierarchy

1. A Noah ES patient record consists of patient demographic data (e.g., name, date of birth, address). Each patient can have zero to many sessions. There can be one session per calendar day. The session contains zero to many actions.

2. An action represents a record of data stored for the patient. More details are covered in the below section, “Action Data.”

3. When a Noah-compatible application saves actions to Noah, it can group the actions together by setting an action group value. Action Group data makes it easier for applications later reading the data to determine what data is closely related to other actions quickly. For example, Noah compatible fitting software will typically store at least four actions when saving a hearing instrument fitting, two hearing instrument selection actions (for each ear), and two fitting actions (for each ear). When saved, all four actions will have the same action group value.

4. As an option, a Noah-compatible application can store a Fast Data View of the action group. A fast data view can be a PDF or image file. The fast data view can later be ready to show a quick preview of the data.

5. Noah-compatible applications can set references from one action to another. For example, a fitting application can reference a fitting action to an audiogram action recording the fact that the fitting is based on that particular audiogram.

Action Data

A Noah Action has many properties, the most prominent being present here.

• Action Description - A short text description of the action (data).

• Action Data Type - HIMSA defines a number of data types used to categorize the data contained in the action.

  • See Noah defined data types and data formats for a complete list of data types.

• Action Date - a timestamp

• Action ID - a globally unique ID

• Action Data

  • Public Format data - Data stored as publicly formatted data follows a HIMSA-published data standard. Please see HIMSA Data Standards for a complete list of standards with full details as to the format.

    • IMPORTANT! - When your application reads public data, it is highly suggested that you set the data format (dataFmt) your application wishes to read. One of the core features that Noah provides is runtime conversions of data between different formats. For example, if your application wishes to read audiometric data in format 500, then your application should request format 500. If the audiogram you are reading happens to be in an older format (e.g. format 200), then the data will be runtime up-converted for you.

  • Private Format data—Applications that create actions can also store data that does not follow a HIMSA-defined data standard. “Private” only applies to format; the data is not hidden from other applications. If you wish for the data to be safeguarded from other applications reading it, you should consider encrypting it.