On 16/08/2006, at 9:09 AM, Andrew McIntyre wrote:
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.
English is a common language. English is a bridge too far. Hence
why not the next best thing? A bridge not too far, an English-like
high level language that is parseable?
Then we can still have ongoing true interoperability with a plurality
of current and future software systems running a plurality of current
and any
future about_to_be_invented coding systems.
Questions like:
these are good questions! Looking a bit closer, the examples given
are in reality simple molecular codes, each with only 2 atomic concepts.
In an emergent coding system, these embodiments may be synthesized
at run time from a palette of basic word concepts.
Electronic health record independent Docle representations of
examples are inserted.
Is the patient on anti-coagulants?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:rx
Has the patient had Abdominal Surgery?
surg.abdo:phx
Has the patient had a Laparoscopic Operation?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:phx
Does the patient have Cardiac disease?
cvd:eval
are easily answered if SNOMED-CT encoded history is available.
Likewise, with a medical history that has docle encoding.
There are other terminology choices, but having free access to
SNOMED-CT so a "common" terminology is available is surely a great
thing.
TANSTAAFL
Negativity about computable terminology shows the same concrete
thinking as this ;-)
Agree. More than computable terminology, we need a terminology with
the potential to metamorphose to a computable health language with
means to support encoding of propositions. <controversial> And more
importantly a computable health language that is human readable to
any health worker who chooses
to control his/her world programmatically. < /controversial>
To accurately convey the complexity of health scenarios we often
require compositions of 2, 3 , 4 , 5 or more atomic concepts linked
in a specific configuration. To keep on assigning a 64-bit number for
each possible scenario will eventually lead to a list 64-bit long.
I can see least two metaphorical outcomes of the above approach: 1)
Brook's Mongolian hoard on a death march 2)Chinese army on their long
march.
And all along I thought we were living in the age of XP , of
refactoring, of being lazy and yet be incredibly productive, of Ruby/
Python and about drifting off in a Smalltalk balloon.
Back from the reverie.
A certain level of richness is required even for simple decision
support - e.g. we need a date component and a result component
linked to the colonoscopy code to get decision support for the next
iteration of colonoscopy for say polyposis. Docle codes support
embeding of both 'finding' and 'date' components e.g. a
colonoscopy with normal findings performed in 1999 is coded as:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:ix,find:norm,in:1999.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
At times, not a bad idea.
(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
What are the actual embodiments of the equivalent codes for the above
in a Snomed encoded patient history? Do we have one, two or three (1
number for each atomic concept plus another for the operator) 64-bit
numbers for each of your example?
Andrew, I look forward to learning more about Snomed and your
interoperability experiences and to more cross-pollination of ideas
all round.
Always learning,
Kuang
More speed, less haze, same meaning as English - with Docle health
language.
_______________________________________________
Gpcg_talk mailing list
[email protected]
http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
