In the context of health informatics, CCOW (pr /seacow/) or Clinical Context Object Workgroup is a Health Level Seven International standard protocol designed to enable disparate applications to synchronize in real time, and at the user-interface level.
It is vendor independent and allows applications to present information at the desktop and portal level in a unified way.
CCOW is the primary standard protocol in healthcare to facilitate a process called "context management".
Context management is the process of using particular "subjects" of interest (e.g., user, patient, clinical encounter, charge item, etc.)
The CCOW standard exists to facilitate a more robust, and near "plug-and-play" interoperability across disparate applications.
Context management is often combined with single sign-on applications in the healthcare environment, but the two are discrete functions.