TY - GEN
T1 - Clinical clarity versus terminological order - The readiness of SNOMED CT concept descriptors for primary care
AU - He, Zhe
AU - Halper, Michael
AU - Perl, Yehoshua
AU - Elhanan, Gai
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 59671026) for financial support.
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - As SNOMED usage becomes more ingrained within applications, its range of concept descriptors, and particularly its synonym adequacy, becomes more important. A simulated clinical scenario involving various term-based concept searches is used to assess whether SNOMED's concept descriptors provide sufficient differentiation to enable possible concept selection between similar terms. Four random samples from different SNOMED concept populations are utilized. Of particular interest are concepts mapped duplicately into UMLS concepts due to shared term patterns. While overall synonym problems are rare (1%), some concept populations exhibited a high rate of potential problems for clinical use (17-62%). The vast majority of issues are due to SNOMED's inherent structure and fine granularity. Many findings hint at a lack of clear delineation between reference and interface terminological qualities. Closer attention should be given to practical clinical use-case scenarios. Reducing SNOMED's structural complexity may alleviate many of the described findings and encourage clinical adoption.
AB - As SNOMED usage becomes more ingrained within applications, its range of concept descriptors, and particularly its synonym adequacy, becomes more important. A simulated clinical scenario involving various term-based concept searches is used to assess whether SNOMED's concept descriptors provide sufficient differentiation to enable possible concept selection between similar terms. Four random samples from different SNOMED concept populations are utilized. Of particular interest are concepts mapped duplicately into UMLS concepts due to shared term patterns. While overall synonym problems are rare (1%), some concept populations exhibited a high rate of potential problems for clinical use (17-62%). The vast majority of issues are due to SNOMED's inherent structure and fine granularity. Many findings hint at a lack of clear delineation between reference and interface terminological qualities. Closer attention should be given to practical clinical use-case scenarios. Reducing SNOMED's structural complexity may alleviate many of the described findings and encourage clinical adoption.
KW - Clinical use
KW - SNOMED CT
KW - Synonyms
KW - Terminology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84870434007&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84870434007&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2389672.2389674
DO - 10.1145/2389672.2389674
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84870434007
SN - 9781450317214
T3 - International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Proceedings
SP - 1
EP - 6
BT - MIX-HS'12 - Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Managing Interoperability and Complexity in Health Systems, Co-located with CIKM 2012
T2 - 2nd International Workshop on Managing Interoperability and Complexity in Health Systems, MIX-HS 2012, Collocated with the 21st ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, CIKM 2012
Y2 - 29 October 2012 through 29 October 2012
ER -