NUVA - Unified Nomenclature of Vaccines

Purpose

The Unified Nomenclature of Vaccines (NUVA) is used to gather vaccination histories from digital or physical sources. The goal is to compile a complete vaccination history, as accurate as the sources allow and interpretable by information systems.

NUVA is maintained by Syadem and published on the ANS website.

Data description

The nomenclature consists of:

Basic Concepts: vaccines and valences
Linking Concepts: target diseases and external codes

The linking concepts represent concepts present in other terminologies. They are integrated to allow the completeness of an autonomous version of NUVA while supporting the connection to these external concepts.

                                    ┌─────────────────┐
                                    │                 │
                              ┌─────│     Valence     │
                              │     │                 │
                              │     └─────────────────┘
                              │
                              │     ┌─────────────────┐
                              │     │                 │
                              ├─────│     Vaccine     │
          ┌──────────────┐    │     │                 │
          │              │    │     └─────────────────┘
          │     NUVA     │────┤
          │              │    │     ┌─────────────────┐
          └──────────────┘    │     │                 │
                              ├─────│     Disease     │
                              │     │                 │
                              │     └─────────────────┘
                              │
                              │     ┌─────────────────┐
                              │     │                 │
                              └─────│      Code       │
                                    │                 │
                                    └─────────────────┘

More informations and demonstrations on it’s dedicated documentation

Usage

NUVA is accessible threw libraries or a semantic version as an OWL file.

Regarding the libraries, they are available for the following languages:

Ruby
Python
TypeScript
PHP

All these libraries are available upon request at developers@mesvaccins.net.

They all follow the same usage scheme and are organized in the same manner.

At the root level, there are 3 concepts:

version: the version of the nomenclature
queries: the queries that allow the manipulation of concepts while ensuring the correct use of joins
repositories: objects that allow the manipulation of the nomenclature’s collections

All repositories are organized in the same way and are all composed of 2 methods:

all: allows retrieving the entire collection
find: allows retrieving an element of the collection by its identifier

The vaccine repository also allows for a search by similarity on the vaccine name and alternative names.

                                    ┌───────────┐
                                    │           │
                                    │  VERSION  │
                                    │           │
                                    └───────────┘
                                    ┌───────────┐
                                    │           │
                                    │  QUERIES  │
                                    │           │
                                    └───────────┘
                                    ┌───────────┐
                                    │           │
                                    │REPOSITORIES
                                    │           │
                                    └───────────┘
                                           │
                              ┌────────────┼────────────┐
                              ▼            ▼            ▼
                        ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐
                        │          │ │          │ │          │
                        │ VACCINES │ │ VALANCES │ │ DISEASES │
                        │          │ │          │ │          │
                        └──────────┘ └──────────┘ └──────────┘

Concept Details

Vaccine

Vaccines represent:

a fully qualified product (BOOSTRIXTETRA)
a combination of valences (Tdap)
a target disease (rabies vaccine)

When the same product is marketed in different territories under different brands (such as BOOSTRIXTETRA, POLIO BOOSTRIX, and BOOSTRIX-POLIO), since production conditions may differ, a vaccine code is assigned for each brand.

For a fully qualified product, the label is unique, not associated with a specific language, and corresponds to the vaccine’s brand name.

For a combination of valences or a target disease, there is a label for each language.

Property	Type	Description
id	`string`
name	`TranslatedField`
code	`integer`
code_nuva	`string`
codes	`Code` `[]`
valence_ids	`string` `[]`
injection_methods	`string` `[]`
short_description	`Description`
description	`Description`
other_names	`string` `[]`
distributions	`Distribution` `[]`
generic	`boolean`
replaced_by_id	`null`
created_at	`string`
updated_at	`string`

Vaccine.injection_methods

Type: string []
- Should be one of this values:
  - intramuscular
  - subcutaneous
  - oral
  - intranasal
  - intradermal

Valence

Valence is the minimal functional unit for characterizing a vaccine.

The most explicit valences represent a combination of antigens for the same target disease and a dose. For example, for whooping cough, the following valences are included:

aP: acellular whooping cough, standard dose
ap: acellular whooping cough, low dose
wP: whole cell whooping cough

The granularity of valences is adapted to the production of vaccines in the real world.

It is not necessary to create individual valences for antigens targeting variants of the same disease that are always associated. Beyond valences for known vaccines, there are abstract valences, which correspond to vaccination courses with degraded information.

For example, in addition to the three valences mentioned above, abstract valences include:

Per: unspecified whooping cough valence
Acel: acellular pertussis vaccine, unspecified dose

Abstract valences are presented as the parents of the real valences they could represent. Immunoglobulins against vaccine-preventable diseases are coded as valences, as their delivery has an impact on the vaccination strategy.

Property	Type	Description
id	`string`
code	`integer`
name	`object`
antigene_type	`string`
abbreviation	`string`
translated_abbreviation	`object`
disease_ids	`string` `[]`
vaccine_ids	`string` `[]`
created_at	`string`
updated_at	`string`
parent_id	`string`

Version

Property	Type	Description
number	`integer`
major	`integer`
minor	`integer`
patch	`integer`

Here’s the translated Markdown content for the “Code” section:

Code

External codes correspond to the representation of vaccines in other coding systems. They are organized by coding system.

A single vaccine can correspond to multiple external codes from different coding systems, such as pharmaceutical codes (CIS, CIP, PZN, CNK, etc.), logistic codes (GTIN), international vaccine codes (SNOMED-CT, ATC), or national vaccine codes (CVX, THL Rokotevalmisteet, etc.).

For a given external code, there is one and only one vaccine, corresponding to the same level of precision.

Property	Type	Description
value	`string`	The code value, for example 3400936774018 (CIP for BOOSTRIXTETRA)
nomenclature	`Nomenclature`	A code indicating the external nomenclature, for example: CIP

Code.nomenclature

Type: Nomenclature
Values:
- ICD10
- SNOMED-CT
- AIC
- CNK
- ATC
- GTIN
- CP-NRONATIDENT
- CIS
- CIP
- CODE_NATIONAL_SPAIN
- PZN
- UPC
- NTIN
- CVC
- DIN
- EU-NUMBER
- NDC
- CPT
- CVX

Disease

Property	Type	Description
id	`string`
name	`TranslatedField`
code	`integer`
codes	`Code` `[]`
valence_ids	`string` `[]`
screenable	`boolean`
vaccinable	`boolean`
updated_at	`string`
created_at	`string`

Distribution

	Type	Description
area_id	`string`
name	`string`
starts_on	`string`
ends_on	`string`

TranslatedField

Property	Type	Description
de	`string`
en	`string`
fr	`string`
nl	`string`
ru	`string`
ua	`string`
es	`string`
it	`string`