WHO-FIC meeting poster

1. Introduction
Title
The main objective of the Clinical Dictionary for iSalut is to normalize the vocabulary used in CHS by healthcare providers to exchange information with other centres and organizations. The project collects different controlled vocabularies that can be used to:
•Achieve a full semantic interoperability between information systems.
•Uniquely identify the clinical information recorded by healthcare professionals.
•Provide a homogeneous base to represent contents and meanings in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) for research and innovation projects. The worked resources in the Clinical Dictionary are also used in other iHealth projects like the Shared Medical Records System of Catalonia (HC3), the Personal Healthcare Chanel (CPS) or the model to integrate assistance levels (WiFIS).
Clinical Dictionary for iSalut:
An integrative ontological tool
Abstract The Clinical Dictionary for iSalut (iHealth) is a transversal project of Generalitat of Catalonia’s Health Department that aims to standardize the vocabulary used by healthcare providers in Catalan Health System (CHS). The Dictionary uses SNOMED CT as representation ontology and reference terminology for different healthcare domains like scales of assessment of chronic patients, procedures, allergies, types of documents or anatomic pathology.
11-17 October 2014 Barcelona, Spain
Poster Number
WHO/CTS to insert
WHO - FAMILY OF INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS NETWORK ANNUAL MEETING 2014
Authors: Rius A¹, Graupera A¹, Nozal M², Rovira M³, Gallego C³, Canela J⁴
¹Tecnocampus, ²Catalan Health Institut, ³TicSalut Foundation, ⁴ Public Health Department, University of Barcelona. Barcelona (Spain)
2011
2012
2013
September 2014
Domains worked
1
2
6
6
Subsets created
1
11
8
11
Concepts created
182
2021
61
130
Table 1: Creation measurements in the Catalan extension of SNOMED CT for the Clinical Dictionary.
arius@tecnocampus.cat
Results
We have worked on 13 domains developing more than 30 subsets and creating more than 2300 concepts of SNOMED CT as part of the Dictionary. All these new elements are available for healthcare providers in both standard and reduced formats.
Methods & Materials
The project is managed by a permanent commission and it is organized in domains of content which are worked by a multidisciplinary team of experts.
The Dictionary is being developed using SNOMED CT as representation ontology. For each domain we choose the vocabulary to use and, if it is necessary, we map it to SNOMED CT. For now we have worked all the domains using SNOMED CT except the laboratory one, in which we use LOINC. We create subsets containing the concepts of each domain to facilitate their use by centres. With these approach, healthcare providers can continue using other vocabularies to work internally and use SNOMED CT (or the selected vocabulary) to exchange information with other centres, as they have a normalized and common vocabulary.
All new components required for the dictionary and the subsets defined to represent each domain are created in the Catalan extension of SNOMED CT. This new content is sent to Health Ministry of Spain to allow their use in all Spanish National Health System and to submit it to IHTSDO if it is considered appropriate.
Conclusions
Acknowledgements
To all the healthcare professionals that participate as domain experts in the Clinical Dictionary for iSalut.
The characteristics of SNOMED CT allow us to have a homogeneous base of representation with different levels of detail that relates concepts of many healthcare domains. Due to this base, we are able to uniquely identify clinical information and their meaning, to represent it using different levels of detail. This versatility allows us to apply the Clinical Dictionary to achieve semantic interoperability in the exchange of information and also to represent content in research and innovation projects.
The Clinical Dictionary for iSalut has three different types of domains:
•Available: centres can use developed resources of the domain.
•Open: we are currently worked on it, as the created resources are not published yet.
•Planned: we haven't started to work on it but we have planned to do it soon. Domains are not static, we update it with new concepts provided by users or those needed to expand their scope if we consider it necessary. Available domains includes groups of professionals (occupations), scales of assessment of chronic patients, immunizations, spirometry test report, laboratory, ophthalmology and notification of adverse reactions to immunizations. The current open domains to work on this year are clinical variables and rare or minority diseases. We are developing more subsets for the WiFIS project too.
Figure 1: Clinical Dictionary for iSalut.