<aside> 💡 Measurements and simple assertions made about a patient, device or other subject.

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This resource is an event resource from a FHIR workflow perspective.

Observations are a central element in healthcare, used to support diagnosis, monitor progress, determine baselines and patterns and even capture demographic characteristics. Most observations are simple name/value pair assertions with some metadata, but some observations group other observations together logically, or even are multi-component observations. Note that the DiagnosticReport resource provides a clinical or workflow context for a set of observations and the Observation resource is referenced by DiagnosticReport to represent laboratory, imaging, and other clinical and diagnostic data to form a complete report.

Uses for the Observation resource include:

• Vital signs such as body weight, blood pressure, and temperature

• Laboratory Data like blood glucose, or an estimated GFR

• Imaging results like bone density or fetal measurements

• Clinical Findings such as abdominal tenderness

• Device measurements such as EKG data or Pulse Oximetry data

• Clinical assessment tools such as APGAR or a Glasgow Coma Score

• Personal characteristics: such as eye-color

• Social history like tobacco use, family support, or cognitive status

• Core characteristics like pregnancy status, or a death assertion

*The boundaries between clinical findings and disorders remains a challenge in medical ontology. Refer the Boundaries section below and in Condition for general guidance. These boundaries can be clarified by profiling Observation for a particular use case.

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