My understanding is that the US open-licence period for SNOMED CT begins Jan 1, 04. I have also been told that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are planning a number of "demonstration projects" early in 2004, involving EHR systems and SNOMED CT terms. Therefore, I would agree with Ed and others who seem to be suggesting that we move forward with whatever steps are necessary to get SNOMED CT into production systems.
In the context of a reasonably homogenous terminology space like the U.S., what would you see as the main problems with SNOMED that would have to be "fixed"? Pre-coordination issues have been mentioned along with some even more fundamental (??) issues that Thomas Beale suggests will take several years or possibly a decade to straighten out. Of course, from my point of view, my biggest problem will likely be scarcity of special vision care concepts/terms. So, what would we have to do exactly? And which standards organization would coordinate such a project... HL7? -Chris Christopher J. Feahr, O.D. Optiserv Consulting (Vision Industry) http://Optiserv.com http://VisionDataStandard.org Office (707) 579-4984 Cell (707) 529-2268 At 09:03 AM 9/25/2003 -0400, William E Hammond wrote: >I agree with Gerard that we need to be careful. However, that does not >mean that we go to the lowest denominator. IF we think SNOMED is the best >solution, then we need to spend our time and energy on finding how to make >SNOMED available to the rest of the world. We have a debate in our school >system in Durham. The poorer kids do not have access to the Internet and >to laptops. The debate is whether to prohibit the use of computers and >Internet for school work or to try to find methods that will provider >laptops and Internet access to the poorer kids. I think the answer is >simple. > >However, I do think it is important to make sure that SNOMED is the answer >and will be acceptable before we move aggressively. > >Ed Hammond > >- >If you have any questions about using this list, >please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org - If you have any questions about using this list, please send a message to d.lloyd at openehr.org
