<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.