Executive summary of the reVITALize initiative: standardizing obstetric data definitions.

Precision in language has become critically important with the evolution of the electronic medical record and proliferation of measurement in vital statistics and health care. Taking the opportunity to standardize clinical definitions is a fundamental step in building a robust national data infrastructure that is useful and useable for clinicians and patients. The reVITALize Initiative leads and coordinates a national multidisciplinary movement to standardize obstetric data definitions for written and verbal clinical communication, electronic health record data capture, vital statistics and public health surveillance, measurement, quality improvement, reporting, and research.