Implementing rules to the control modeling with SNOMED CT

NAVAS, H; LÓPEZ OSORNIO, A; GAMBARTE, MARIA LAURA; GÓMEZ, ADRIÁN R.; BAUM, ANALÍA J.; LUNA, DANIEL R.; GONZÁLEZ, B. DE QUIRÓS F.

Congreso; 13th World Congress on Health Informatics; 2010

The use of SNOMED CT as a standard reference terminologyenables interoperability between clinical systems. This referencetool provides a method for creating post-coordinatedterms by users according to local needs. While the creation ofthese terms is free, there are a number of rules, as defined inthe user manual of SNOMED CT that must be followed.TheHospital Italiano of Buenos Aires has a Terminology Serverthat encodes medical terms, using SNOMED CT as the referencevocabulary. An interoperability analysis performed withthe Nebraska Medical Center in 2006 found a high error rate(26%) in post-coordinated terms. Therefore, we implementedan automatic system of rules within the Terminology Server asdefined in the user manual.Following rules implementation, the error rate decreasedfrom 26% to 2%.