This documentation is a work in progress.
What is NUVA ?
NUVA, the Unified Nomenclature of Vaccine, is a community tool for vaccine codification experts across the world to represent in a common, consistent and documented way the history of administered vaccines.
It is provided under the Creative Commons CC-BY license.
What need does it serve ?
There are already many code systems for medicinal products. Yet, contrary to almost all products, vaccines have a lifetime effect. People need to keep track of the vaccines they have received through their lifetime, while the medicinal products codes are rarely valid for more than a few years and only within a given country or region.
The purpose of NUVA is to bridge the gap across existing codifications, both across countries and in the very long term.
What does it consist of ?
THe NUVA environment consists of:
- the core NUVA ontology, that is a structured knowledge base formed by concepts for administered vaccines, concepts for their valences, that is their functions in training the immunity system, and relationships among these concepts.
- additional layers, that enrich the code NUVA with further information. The two essential layers types are:
- language layers, that transcribe the wording for the NUVA concepts from English to another language.
- alignment layers, that provide for each code in an existing representation of vaccines their equivalent NUVA code.
- an organisation to reference, update and distribute the NUVA core and the additional layers.
- supporting tools for users and for contributors