Over 1 Million Relationships: SNOMED CT®

Dr Kent Spackman, former chief terminologist for IHTSDO gives a presentation on SNOMED CT. The talk is divided into several segments (presumably for technical reasons) and I think part of the middle section may be missing. The videos above are helpful in gaining insights into the sheer scale of SNOMED CT as a coding system.

Dr Spackman aims to provide an overview without going into too much technical detail. He explains clinical identifiers, concepts, classes and instances, item and partition identifiers as well as a check digits. Dr Spackman explains the subtle semantics which reflect programming terminology and concepts.

There are 63,564 disorder concepts. 27948 organisms and 25,627 body structures as well 139,348 defining relationships using anatomy. There are over 1 million relationships that are possible within the SNOMED CT coding system. He also talks about the specialised rules that define the relationships.

Dr Spackman also talks about information models. For instance free text is one of the simplest information models but makes it difficult for analysis.

The presentation gives an insight into the complexity and flexibility of SNOMED CT.

Appendix A – Other Posts in the Series on Health Information Exchanges

Arizona Statewide Health Information Exchange

A History of The Health Information Exchange in Pennsylvania

The Arkansas Health Information Exchange – SHARE

The California Health Information Exchange – Cal Index

Health Information Exchanges

Health Information Exchanges and Chronic Conditions

HIPPA and Health Information Exchanges

Creating a Health Information Exchange in Arizona

Standardisation of Health Information Technology in New Zealand

Why Do We Need Electronic Record Systems to Talk to Each Other

Appendix B – Definition of Health Information Exchange

This is the definition of the Health Information Exchange that I use (Hersh et al, 2015)

‘Health information exchange (HIE), the electronic sharing of clinical information across the boundaries of health care organizations‘.

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