GNU Health/Glossary

ICD-10-PCS

The ICD-10 Procedure Coding System (ICD-10-PCS) is classification standard for surgical procedures proposed by the a World Health Organization (WHO). See Surgery.

Company

A company is a legal entity that has employees. You may define hierarchical company structures by assigning a parent company. The company sets the currency as well as header and footer texts for reports. GNU Health users belong to a company as well. Technically speaking, a company is an extension of a party.

ECG

Short for electrocardiography or electrocardiogram. See Intensive Care Unit.

Employee

An employee is a person that works for a company. An employee record in GNU health simply links a person to a company.

Glasgow Coma Scale

The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is a standard to evaluate the level of consciousness of neurological patients. See Intensive Care Unit.

GSC

Short for Glasgow Coma Scale. See Intensive Care Unit.

ICU

Short for Intensive Care Unit.

Inventory

An inventory is a list of all items in stock at a given time. It allows to control and update the quantities of the products in stock. See Stock Management.

Module

GNU Health consists of many modules which add specific functionality to the system. Depending on the needs of your health institution, you may or may not install certain modules. See Modules.

Move

A move documents the relocation of a certain amount of a single product. Several moves are grouped to shipments. See Stock Management.

Party

Parties are used to represent organisations and people in GNU Health. A party is a generic concept and needs to be specified when you create one. Examples for parties are companies, health institutions, patients, and health professionals.

Patient

A patient is a person that gets treatment in a health institution. Technically speaking, a patient is an extension of a party that is defined as Person and Patient. See Patient Management.

Pediatrics Symptom Checklist

The Pediatrics Symptom Checklist (PSC) is an evaluation standard for children. See Pediatrics.

Person

A person is a human being. Persons can be further specified as patients or health professionals.

Person Unique Identification Number

The Person Unique Identification Number (or PUID for short) is the unique identifier for every person stored in the system.

Product

A product can be a physical product that a company owns or sells, but it can also be a service (i.e. a medical treatment, a test in a laboratory). Each product has a price and is the basic building block of billing in GNU Health.

PSC

Short for Pediatrics Symptom Checklist.

PUID

Short for Person Unique Identification Number.

QR Code

A Quick Response Code (or QR Code for short) is a machine readable tag that stores information like an ID, a URL, or other information. QR codes can be decoded with most smartphones or tablets as long as they have a built-in camera and an appropriate app. In GNU Health, QR codes are used for patient ID cards (see Patient Management) and newborn wristbands (see Pediatrics).

Shipment

A shipment is a collection of moves and documents the relocation of physical products. There are Supplier Shipments, Customer Shipments and Internal Shipments. See Stock Management.

User

A user is someone who uses GNU Health. A user record has at least a user name and a password. A user belongs to a company and can be linked to one or more employees who are logging into the system with that user. Access rights of a user are defined by assigning the user to one or more user groups. The language of the GNU Health user interface is defined on the user level as well. See Access Management.