POIZ Key Words and Concepts

For inclusion in the POIZ ballot package:

Antigen: A component of a disease-causing agent that stimulates an immune response. More commonly, the disease which a vaccine is supposed to protect against. In the context of immunization, the latter is the meaning of interest.

Assessment or Evaluation: The assessment or evaluation is a determination of whether vaccine doses administered to a patient are valid based on an accepted immunization schedule.

Client/patient: The person receiving the immunizations or having recommendations made.

Component rules: The collection of rules relating to all schedule doses in a schedule series.

Dose rules: Dose rules are the dose specific rules that validate a given immunization or control the recommendations for the next dose.

Immunization History: The collection of immunizations received by the client/patient.

Immunization: The record of the event of receiving an immunization. Sometimes referred to as a shot or a dose of vaccine.

Immunization Schedule: A schedule is the collection of schedule series. In most cases, a schedule is published and supported by health jurisdictions or groups, such as the ACIP in the US.

Schedule dose: A schedule dose represents one of the expected doses in a series.

Schedule Series: A series is the constellation of vaccine doses that meet the criteria to be considered protected against members of a vaccine group. More than one series may meet those goals and some series may be amended based on history. For instance, there are several series that can meet the goals of HIB. The number of doses recommended for one of these series changes, based on current age and history of vaccination.

Vaccination Forecast: The vaccine administration recommendations, based on the previous history of vaccination, patient/client age, and patient/client health conditions. These recommendations would be derived from the series selected in the schedule selected.

Vaccination History: The collection of vaccine doses actually administered to a patient.

Vaccine: The product that composes an immunization.

Vaccine group/vaccine family: The set of vaccines that can be administered to meet the patient's goal of being protected against a particular infectious disease or set of diseases.

Note that we could also have a big box in this diagram holding vaccine forecasts or recommendations.

[Note: I fundamentally disagree with the definition of Series (and therefore the definition of Schedule) here and continue to maintain that it is no different than group/family. (Noam Arzt)]