1. A computer program product comprising at least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing one or more sequences of instructions, wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions by one or more hardware processors causes the one or more hardware processors to perform the steps comprising: providing a repository of terminology content stored in accordance with a reference information model, wherein the reference information model includes a plurality of backbone classes, wherein the plurality of backbone classes are associated with a plurality of other types of backbone classes to form data structures representing a plurality of higher level healthcare concepts; receiving a concept query request specifying a set of search criteria, wherein the search criteria include a first classification identifier corresponding to a first classification container, and a semantic statement that defines, using the first classification identifier, an expected concept query result generated from a terminology service; generating, via a concept query generator, a classification concept query from the concept query request, wherein the classification concept query includes at least a subset of the search criteria that includes the first classification identifier; providing the classification concept query to the terminology service which manages the repository of terminology content, wherein the terminology content comprises a plurality of domains of concepts, wherein a plurality of semantically equivalent concepts are stored in one or more of said domains of concepts, and mapped to one another using inter-domain or intra-domain mappings defined in the terminology content, and wherein concepts in each domain are organized into a plurality of classification containers, wherein each classification container represents a collection of semantically equivalent concepts having a corresponding classification identifier; identifying, using the defined mappings and the semantic statement, one or more classification containers, wherein each of the one or more classification containers includes a concept semantically equivalent to a concept in the first classification container; creating a concept query result by extracting a plurality of concepts associated with the first classification identifier, from the first classification container and the one or more identified classification containers; and generating, from the concept query result, a modified query that includes predicates corresponding to the plurality of associated concepts, to retrieve a set of stored data records from an electronic data record system.
6. The computer program product of claim 1 , wherein the classification container is associated with a set of attributes described in part by at least one terminology code, and wherein each concept within the classification container is identified based in part on the at least one terminology code.