Hello All, Unless their is some understanding of what Snomed-CT is and what it can do then it appears like a big list of words, which it is not.
There has been much talk about the "Semantic Web" where the internet is used for meaningful machine to machine communication. Snomed-CT is a building block for semantic medical records or a semantic web of medicine. Users may only see the snomed terms, but computers see a rich language that allows advanced decision support and assist users in ways that are only limited by your imagination. The real question is how much imagination you have. Applications that treat Snomed-CT as a pick list or terms will not get any advantage other than a dictionary of terms. However speaking a common language is one of the foundation stones of real interoperability. Questions like: Is the patient on anti-coagulants? Has the patient had Abdominal Surgery? Has the patient had a Laparoscopic Operation? Does the patient have Cardiac disease? are easily answered if SNOMED-CT encoded history is available. There are other terminology choices, but having free access to SNOMED-CT so a "common" terminology is available is surely a great thing. Negativity about computable terminology shows the same concrete thinking as this ;-) "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943 (http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Famous_Last_Words/4.html) -- Best regards, Andrew mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Andrew McIntyre Buderim Gastroenterology Centre www.buderimgastro.com.au PH: 07 54455055 FAX: 54455047 _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
