One model, one language for joined-up care

Explore the shared language of health and care: every concept, relationship, and diagram of a model conformant to ISO 13940:2026.

Care rarely fails for want of effort. It fails at the seams: the referral that loses its context, the discharge that reaches the social worker as a fax summary, the assessment repeated because nobody can be sure what the last one meant. Behind every one of those failures is the same root cause — organisations describing the same care in different, incompatible terms.

A model conformant to ISO 13940:2026 — Health informatics — System of concepts to support continuity of care (widely known as ContSys) removes that root cause. It gives commissioners, practitioners, social care teams, analysts, and system suppliers one shared, internationally agreed system of concepts covering the whole of care: health conditions and needs, the actors and resources involved, the activities they perform, the processes and episodes those activities form, the plans that direct them, the mandates that authorise them, and the records that document them.

Figure 1. The concept areas of the conformant model
The concept areas of the conformant modelDiagram showing the care process at the apex of a pyramid, supported by operative and strategic tiers of resource management and process management, exchanging with each other and with a surrounding ring of finance management and information management and information security. THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CONCEPT AREAS FINANCE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION SECURITY Care process care activities · care plans health conditions · activity management Operative resource management resource coordination Operative process management compulsory rules · ethical guidelines knowledge-based care guidelines Strategic resource management people · material and devices organisational structure Strategic process management regulations · knowledge ethics and basic values Care processes are supported by, and interact with, operative and strategic management of resources and processes — all within finance and information management.

What conformance buys you

  • Unambiguous communication. Every concept in the model carries an agreed definition and an agreed set of relationships, so information keeps its meaning as it crosses team, organisational, and national boundaries.
  • Clinical and social care as equals. The second edition of the standard was substantially extended so that social care is modelled with the same rigour as clinical care, supporting genuinely integrated services and smooth transitions between them. See Social care as a first-class citizen.
  • Ontological rigour. Every upper-level concept is aligned to the DOLCE top-level ontology (ISO/IEC 21838-3), so the model's categories are formally validated and safe to extend, map, and reason over. See Alignment with the DOLCE upper ontology.
  • A foundation, not a straitjacket. ContSys defines concepts and their relationships, not database schemas. Implementations add attributes and detail while remaining conformant, so the model outlives any single technology choice. See The role of a conformant model.
  • Coherence with the wider standards estate. The terminology is aligned with ISO 13606-1 record communication and with HL7 FHIR, so the model connects cleanly to record-sharing and API programmes. See How the model fits the wider standards estate.
  • Value beyond software. The same concept system underpins business analysis, service design, commissioning, policy formulation, and the secondary use of care data — one language from board to bedside to back office.

The topics that follow explain what the standard is, what role a conformant model plays, and how continuity of care, social care, and the ontological foundations fit together — closing with the general terms on which every area builds. The full concept-by-concept reference occupies the chapters that follow, beginning with Health matters and ending with Health records.