Lexicon · NucLex for innovators
Longitudinal record
Fully specified name: Longitudinal record (concept)
Observations and events linked across time for a subject.
- Scope note
- Distinguish observation time, reporting time, and treatment timing.
- Synonyms
- None recorded as true synonyms in this context.
- Monograph
- Precision nuclear oncology (draft)
- External mappings
- None recorded. In W0 no mapping to SNOMED CT® or any external authority is asserted for this entry. A future mapping record will carry source system, identifier, version, relation type, evidence, author, confidence where meaningful, and review state.
- Formal status
- Editorial entry only. It is not part of any released ontology and a prose edit here changes no formal definition.
Draft. This entry is an unreviewed draft. Its sources have not been checked by a named person and no domain reviewer has approved it. Treat every claim as provisional.
Notes
A longitudinal record is the set of observations and events about one subject, ordered and linked in time. For a patient in nuclear oncology it includes imaging studies, laboratory results, radiopharmaceutical administrations, other treatments, clinical assessments, and outcomes, each dated. The value lies in the links: which scan preceded which decision, which laboratory value followed which administration, and how a measure changed between visits.
Three kinds of time are routinely confused. Observation time is when the thing happened or was measured: the scan was acquired, the blood was drawn. Reporting time is when the result entered the record: the report was signed, the result was transmitted. Treatment timing anchors events to a course of care: days after the first administration, cycle number, or interval since the last imaging. A record that stores only one of these cannot answer basic questions, such as whether a result was known when a decision was made.
Clinicians read the record as a narrative; epidemiologists as measurements with missing values; informaticians as timestamped resources, with standards such as HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) supplying the structure. Missingness is itself information: an absent measurement may mean not done, not recorded, or not transmitted.
NucLex proposes the longitudinal record as the frame in which targets, agents, distribution, and dose are linked for a person. Any illustration in the publication uses synthetic data labeled as such.