Many clinical applications include data entry interfaces controlled or assisted by protocols, templates or structured data entry forms. Each field on a data entry form may allow only a limited set of terms or concepts to be entered. The set of candidate terms or concepts may range from very small (e.g. a set of priorities for a procedure) to very large (e.g. any general diagnosis).can be used to restrict the possible values that meet the requirements of a particular data entry protocol.

Examples of using reference sets to support search and data entry include:

can use an appropriateto display the valid data entry options and constrain text searches. For more detailed use case examples, please refer to the following sections: