In our example, we picked some HealthVault types to be used in the application based on our device, data availability, and purpose. Every application programmer needs to go through this data exploration based on your needs and goals. This section gives an overview of all HealthVault types so that the reader can have a good understanding of what is available in the system.
HealthVault stores personal health information ranging from fitness data to medical images. Table 4-1 shows the categorization of the data as displayed to the end user.
Table 4-1. End user categorization of HealthVault data
Category | HealthVault types |
|---|---|
Fitness | Aerobic Exercise Session, Aerobic Profile, Aerobic Weekly Goal, Calorie Guideline, Daily Dietary Intake, Exercise, Exercise Samples, Weight Goal |
Conditions | Allergy, Concern, Condition, Contraindication, Emotional State, Pregnancy, Problem, Respiratory Profile |
Medications | Asthma Inhaler, Asthma Inhaler Use, Daily Medication Usage, Insulin Injection, Insulin Injection Use, Medication, Medication Fill |
Health History | Allergic Episode, Annotation, Cardiac Profile, Diabetic Profile, Discharge Summary, Encounter, Explanation of Benefits, Family History, Family History Condition, Family History Person, Health Assessment, Immunization, Procedure, Question Answer |
Measurements | Blood Glucose, Blood Oxygen Saturation, Blood Pressure, Body Composition, Body Dimension, Cholesterol Profile, Device, Genetic SNP Results, HbA1C, Heart Rate, Height, Lab Test Results, Microbiology Lab Results, PAP Session, Peak Flow, Radiology Lab Results, Sleep Journal AM, Sleep Journal PM, Spirometer, Vital Signs, Weight |
Personal Profile | Advance Directive, Appointment, Basic, Contact, Healthcare Proxy, Life Goal, Payer, Person (emergency or provider contact), Personal Demographic Information, Personal Image |
Files | Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), Continuity of Care Document (CCD), Continuity of Care Record (CCR), File, Medical Image Study, Password-Protected Package |
Custom Data | Application Data Reference, Application Specific, Group Membership, Group Membership Activity, Link, Status |
HealthVault offers a range of fitness types. The most commonly used fitness data type is Exercise. Exercise provides a terminology-based categorization of kinds of exercise, e.g., walking or running. Each activity can also be associated with terminology-driven units: Count, Mile, etc.
Devices such as FitBit and Withings work with this type. The exercise activities terminology lists a range of exercise values, including running, walking, swimming, etc. Devices that fetch detailed information on exercise can write individual samples to the Exercise Sample type. For instance, exercise watches developed by Polar write to exercise samples in addition to summarizing the workout in the Exercise type.
This category of types is implemented in a fairly generic way so that various industry formats, such as the one used by Garmin’s Connect website (http://connect.garmin.com/), can translate easily to these types. ISO units can also be translated easily to HealthVault units.
Health problems, allergies, contra-indications, and mental health (emotional state) are categorized in the Condition set of types. Conditions are sensitive health problems that usually have an onset date and a status associated with them.
The HealthVault Shell uses the Condition type to record conditions. Conditions entered through the user interface are mapped to SNOMED-CT terminology.
Medications are the center of modern medicine. HealthVault offers a number of granular types to capture the essence of medications.
A number of pharmacies, including CVS and Walgreens, offer applications for importing prescription data into HealthVault, but the user interface and integration for these applications is a bit challenging.
The most frequently used data types in this category are Medication and Medication Fill. Each prescription could be broken into Medication and Medication Fill. Medication Fill is the recurring part of one’s prescription. As you may recall from Relating HealthVault Data Types, the Medication Fill type is usually related to Medication using the related-item semantics when entered through the HealthVault Shell.
Medications are mapped or coded to the RxNorm Active Medicines terminology.
Immunizations, procedures, family history, health events, etc. form the basis of the Health History category.
The most notable application using types in this category is the Surgeon General’s Family History application (https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/fhh-web). This powerful application enables individuals to easily create a family health history tree.
Measurements are the most extensive category of HealthVault data types. Measurements range from the output of various fitness devices to lab results. For instance, the Withings weighing scale writes to the weight measures, and FitBit writes to sleep measures. The measures are granular records of daily activity and consequently are traceable.
On the other hand, the Lab Test Results type, one of the most complicated HealthVault types, represents results from labs. It can be used in conjunction with industry-standard terminologies.
The Personal Profile category of HealthVault types contains data pertaining to health care proxies, personal images, and demographics. Almost every HealthVault application that shows a user’s picture or looks at ages or other demographic information uses types in this category.
HealthVault, unlike most personal health records, allows you to
upload a number of types of files, and therefore supports data types
for these files. Example 4-14 shows
the file extensions supported, displayed through a GetServiceDefinition call in PowerShell.
This information can also be viewed online in the HealthVault
Developer Center’s service definition section (http://developer.healthvault.com/pages/methods/methods.aspx).
Example 4-14. List of file extensions supported by HealthVault
PS C:\Windows\system32> $a = Get-ServiceDefinition
PS C:\Windows\system32> $a.ConfigurationValues
Key Value
--- -----
allowedDocumentExtensions .avi,.bluebutton,.bmp,.ccd,.ccr,.cda,.doc,.docm,...
autoReconcilableTypes 1e1ccbfc-a55d-4d91-8940-fa2fbf73c195,9c48a2b8-...
blobHashBlockSizeBytes 2097152
blobHashDefaultAlgorithm SHA256Block
blobStreamWriteTokenTtlMs 172800000
defaultCulture en
defaultPersonInfosPerRetrieval 200
emailValidationExp ^([\w-+\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]...
liveIdAuthPolicy HBI
liveIdEnvironment PROD
<... clipped for brevity..>The Medical Image study type used by the HealthVault Connection Center uploads DICOM medical images in this type. The CCD/CCR types are industry-standard ways by which various hospital information systems send care records to HealthVault. Google Health users, for instance, migrated to HealthVault using the CCR type. The Message file type is the backbone of HealthVault’s Direct integration. Any email message received by the user is stored in the Message type.
The Application Specific type, already covered in the section Creating Custom Types with regard to adding a repository in which to store self-experiments, is the most important custom data type. This type is used by various applications to store information in HealthVault for which no other type or extension to a type is appropriate. For instance, the Vivacity’s Spending Scout application (http://www.spendingscout.com/) stored explanation of benefit information in this type until the HealthVault team created an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) type to support it more directly.
Get Enabling Programmable Self with HealthVault now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
