I would add to Eric's point 3 that (based on the content of an IHTSDO webinar) 
the workflow/process implemented in the IHTSDO workbench involves an explicit 
manual approval step for every item in the generated "static" refset.  I don't 
know how/if there is any special support for dealing with re-generating the 
refset based on a new SNOMED release or a modified set of specification queries.

m

----
Dr Michael Lawley
Principal Research Scientist
The Australia e-Health Research Centre http://aehrc.com/
+61 7 3253 3609; 0432 832 067

________________________________________
From: openehr-technical-bounces at chime.ucl.ac.uk [openehr-technical-bounces 
at chime.ucl.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Eric Browne [[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, 6 May 2010 9:20 PM
To: For openEHR clinical discussions
Cc: For openEHR clinical discussions; Openehr-Technical
Subject: Re: IHTSDO meeting - term binding presentation available

Hi Sebastian,

If I can give my own perspective on this, having been peripherally involved for 
some time..

1. Unfortunately, the IHTSDO (www.ihtsdo.org), who is responsible for the 
ongoing management and development of SNOMED CT, is still a somewhat closed and 
traditional standards development organisation. It has no publicly accessible 
wiki of resources ? la openEHR. It does, however, have a substantial community 
of individuals from member countries and affiliate organisations and several 
collaborative websites and mailing lists where ideas, contributions, new 
specifications etc. are documented and evolve. I would guess that the majority 
of participants are either active in other standards development organisations, 
or staff/affiliates of member nation health informatics programs such as the 
UK's NHS Connecting for Health Program, Canada's Infoway, Australia's National 
E-Health Transition Authority, etc.

2. For many years prior to IHTSDO taking over SNOMED CT from the College of 
American Pathologists, SNOMED CT embraced a mechanism and format for producing 
"subsets" of SNOMED CT. About 18 months ago, proposals for a new  SNOMED 
release format and a new Reference Set format (to replace the old subset 
mechanism) emerged and evolved. These two proposals morphed into a single 
umbrella specification called Release Format 2, which has now reached Draft for 
Trial Use status within the IHTSDO. One of the specification documents covers 
Reference Set formats and is available in part 2 of RF2 at: 
http://www.ihtsdo.org/publications/draft-for-review-and-trial-use/ .  This 
draft specification includes support for "language refsets", which may be of 
particular interest to you. Access to the collaborative space where these 
documents are made available is described at: 
http://www.ihtsdo.org/about-ihtsdo/collaborative-space/ .

3. To my knowledge there is no formal IHTSDO proposal for a query language to 
express Refset membership specifications. However, the IHTSDO Terminology 
Workbench does incorporate quite a sophisticated mechanism for building refsets 
using an underlying ( and evolving) query-based expression language. Note: 
these refsets do not necessarily need to be specific to SNOMED. The refset 
specifications, however, are currently designed to  construct  static files for 
distribution alongside the SNOMED core and national extension files, rather 
than for producing dynamically evaluated termsets for  local needs, as might be 
supported for openEHR templates, say.

eric
----

On 2010-05-06, at 5:48 PM, Sebastian Garde wrote:

> Hi Thomas,
>
> do you know if there is a formal way of how RefSets (=the resulting Snomed CT 
> codes etc.) and the RefSet query (=the query on Snomed CT to get to the 
> RefSet) are expressed and shared?
> Similar to what is described here but based on RefSets: 
> http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/term/Ocean+Terminology+Query+Language+%28TQL%29
>
> I agree that RefSets are a good way forward, but they need to be available, 
> reusable and sharable, etc.
>
> Sebastian
>
> Thomas Beale wrote:
>>
>> I attended the IHTSDO meeting just finished in Copenhagen. Things look 
>> pretty good for where SNOMED CT is going generally - the RF2 technical 
>> infrastructure seems relatively well designed. There is a lot of activity in 
>> content modeling, the IHTSDO workbench and many other areas relevant to 
>> openEHR. Converely, I believe openEHR will be very important to make SNOMED 
>> CT work in many places, since it will be via archetypes, templates and 
>> associated ref sets that information systems will be able to connect to 
>> terminology in a disciplined way. I believe that ref sets are the future of 
>> SNOMED CT (and any terminology for that matter) in use in real systems.
>>
>> I was asked to present a view from openEHR about 'terminology binding', i.e. 
>> connecting terminology and information models. My presentation is on this 
>> page http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/term/Terminology+Binding
>> or see the following direct links:
>>      ? PDF - 
>> http://www.openehr.org/wiki/download/attachments/5997267/openEHR_term_binding_IHTSDO_april_2010.pdf
>>      ? PPTX - 
>> http://www.openehr.org/wiki/download/attachments/5997267/openEHR_term_binding_IHTSDO_april_2010.pptx
>> I hope this is useful.  I will continue to document IHTSDO-related thoughts 
>> on the openEHR wiki, and I encourage others to do the same.
>>
>> - thomas beale
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> openEHR-technical mailing list
>>
>> openEHR-technical at openehr.org
>> http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical
>>
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> openEHR-clinical mailing list
> openEHR-clinical at openehr.org
> http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-clinical


_______________________________________________
openEHR-technical mailing list
openEHR-technical at openehr.org
http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical


Reply via email to