On July 14, the ACC and the American Heart Association (AHA) published the first extensive data dictionary for the outpatient domain of pediatric and congenital cardiology, the 2017 AHA/ACC Key Data Elements and Definitions for Ambulatory Electronic Health Records in Pediatric and Congenital Cardiology, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Due to a wide range of disease processes across a small set of patients in pediatric and congenital heart disease, the data dictionary is crucial to identify best practices, develop evidence-based guidelines and determine statistical significance in patient populations. The committee views this plan as a first step toward achieving electronic health records data exchange for the continuity of clinical care of the pediatric and congenital heart disease patient. Read more on ACC.org.