Work

Clinical clarity versus terminological order

Year: 2012

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: 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.

Source: International Workshop on Managing Interoperability and Complexity in Health Systems (MIXHS)

DOI: 10.1145/2389672.2389674

Authors: Zhe He, Michael Halper, Yehoshua Perl, Gai Elhanan

Institution: New Jersey Institute of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies

Subfield: Molecular Biology

Field: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: U.S. National Library of Medicine

Award: Taxonomies Supporting Orientation, Navigation and Auditing of Terminologies