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.
I'm not sure what "automatically" means. Language translation can occur "automatically", because the entire dictionary of words is loaded into the system. This can't be done automatically. The same applies here. Once you have
the dictionaries loaded (which gives the equivalence in another language), then it can be almost automatic.
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.
I agree completely and emphatically.
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.
The issue is can this be done "legally" for free, since those codes are proprietary. I think not. The next biggest problem I see is that terms in two different systems aren't really the same but almost so. Someone has to make this judgment.
Dave
John
Computer and Computational Sciences
Los Alamos National Laboratory
505-665-1907
