The Columbia International eHealth Laboratory produces an open source standardized terminology intended for use within health information systems, particularly OpenMRS. OpenMRS and CIEL are used by more than 50 LMICs across the globe, but particularly in Africa, Asia and S. America. The common, multi-lingual concept dictionary allows for clinically-friendly data collection and then maps to standard reference terminologies such as SNOMED CT, ICD-10, LOINC and RxNORM. CIEL updates the dictionary on a monthly basis and has been adding COVID-19-specific content since January 2020. The CIEL content supports collection and reporting for the WHO eCRF, CDC PUI, and other public health and research use cases. It is also used by Partners in Health, MSF, AMPATH and other NGOs in addition to national EMR implementations in countries like Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and others.
