>
>A lot of different terminologies can then be made to coexist, although
>someone has to do the work of figuring out what SNOMED term maps to what
>LOINC term, for example.
The absolute killer app is to make this happen automatically. That's kind
of what Andrew is proposing, but not quite.
It should be pointed out that creating new terminologies for the same
domain does not accomplish anything at all, unless, in the very unlikely
event, everyone adopts your terminology.
Right now, the common denominator of all terminologies is that health care
must be paid for and two terminologies determine how much will be paid:
ICD-9CM and CPT-4. Every single medical procedure/visit/etc. in the U.S.
is coded with these two codes. That certainly is the place to start the
thesaurus.
John
