Glossary

Agile development is a term used to describe iterative software development used to shorten the software development lifecycle. Agile development teams execute the entire software development lifecycle in smaller increments, usually called sprints, typically 1-4 weeks long. The software development industry often contrasts agile development with traditional or waterfall development, where the planning for larger projects occurs up front and executed against that plan. Agile development is an iterative approach to development with regular feedback loops or intervals. These iterations allow diversion of a team to be productive in one part of a project while resolving a problem or issue in another part. 

Measure alignment includes using the same quality measures and value sets across settings and within multiple programs when possible. Alignment is achieved when a set of measures works well across settings or programs to produce meaningful information without creating extra work for those responsible for the measurement.

An analytic model for developing clinical practice guidelines is a visual representation of a causal pathway showing the linkages between how the proposed key research question(s) and intervention(s) under consideration as reflected in the PICOTS (P-Patient population; I- Intervention; C- Comparator; O- Outcome; T- Timing; S- Setting) framework and to their intended outcomes requiring confirmation by evidence review to support related recommendations. The linkages in the model represent critical logical premises and presumed relationships among intermediate, surrogate, and ultimate health outcomes related to a specified clinical question. Woolf, S., Schünemann, H. J., Eccles, M. P., Grimshaw, J. M., Shekelle, P. (2012). Developing clinical practice guidelines: types of evidence and outcomes; values and economics, synthesis, grading, and presentation and deriving recommendations. Implementation Science, 7(61). https://implementationscience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1748-5908-7-61

An application programming interface (API) is a system of tools and resources in an operating system enabling developers to create software applications. An API is a software intermediary allowing two applications to talk to each other. Each time you use an app like Facebook, send an instant message, or check the weather on your phone, you are using an API. Frye, M-K. (n.d.). What is an API? Retrieved September 13, 2023, from https://www.mulesoft.com/resources/api/what-is-an-api

A computational artifact is anything created by a human using a computer. An artifact can be, but not limited to a code, program, image, audio, video, presentation, or web page file.