CADS documentation.
A shared language for Canada’s audiometric records.
Audiometrics Canada created and maintains the Canadian Audiometric Data Standard: an open specification for structuring, exchanging, and connecting occupational hearing records. Field and Office are our commercial implementation in development.
This page explains the draft’s purpose and design direction. It is not a complete normative field/schema reference or a claim of completed product conformance.
What CADS describes
- Provider and technician records: who supplied and performed testing.
- Equipment records: audiometer identity and calibration context.
- Worker records: persistent identity independent of an employer or provider.
- Questionnaire records: exposure, protection, and health-history information.
- Test records: thresholds, comparisons, outcomes, and provenance.
Continuity with permission
Our design uses worker-authorized lookup and scoped access to history. Employment context and the performing provider remain associated with each test. Access to audiograms and baselines is distinct from authorization for sensitive supporting records.
These worker-identity and access refinements are being incorporated into the draft. The detailed authorization and identity-verification procedures remain in design.
Reliable exchange
CADS’s direction includes persistent offline records, local calculations, resumable synchronization, duplicate prevention, and traceable corrections and confirmation retests. Records must retain the specification and provincial profile versions used at the time of testing.
Relationship to existing standards
CADS is intended to complement CSA Z107.6 for workplace audiometric testing, CSA Z1007 for hearing loss prevention program management, and ASA/ANSI S3.6 for audiometers, alongside applicable provincial requirements.
It does not replace those standards. Their relevant recordkeeping and reporting requirements must be mapped and actual alignment verified. CADS is not a designated National Standard of Canada; no government endorsement, CSA/ANSI approval, nationwide adoption, or completed product conformance is claimed.
What comes next
Reconcile the data model, verify the Alberta profile, publish a versioned field/schema reference, and establish validation fixtures and a change process. We will publish further documentation here as it is ready.