Great end to this focused discussion @Christian_Reich . The key insights i have learnt that reinforced some of positions.
- Episode table is a derived table. It is derived, like condition_era, drug_era, from the core clinical CDM tables.
- Although built during pre-processing/set-up of the CDM, episode table do not interact with source data in any form. i.e. it is a phenotype like algorithm.
- The output of the phenotype like algorithm is different from cohort i.e. its more than subject_id, cohort_start_date and cohort_end_date and includes elements that a cohort algorithm would not support.
Truly, the use case i think it supports is to algorithmically separate care events that may be unrelated. e.g. if i am getting knee surgery, but during the same days also get a dental workup - the episode table relates the events of knee surgery together i.e. bundle, but does not link to the unrelated events i.e. dental.
It reminds me of old discussion here How to Capture pregnancy data? (EDC, gestation length, etc) - #5 by Gowtham_Rao and the idea of ‘Episode of care’. Health insurance companies have done/been doing/tried to do this for many years.