SNOMED expert to address advanced EHR analytics at HIMSS17
SNOMED CT is one of the U.S.-sanctioned clinical terminologies designed for electronic health record analytics and is commonly listed as a viable option for improving healthcare delivery. But how much is really known about it in the provider community?
As head of education for the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization and SNOMED International in London, David Markwell is the definitive go-to source on what makes SNOMED tick.
Markwell cites the origin of clinical terminology as a 1998 paper by Dr. James Cimino called “Desiderata for Controlled Medical Vocabularies in the Twenty-First Century,” in which he identified 12 key requirements for what has become clinical terminologies.
“The design of SNOMED CT is based closely on those requirements with some additions, including practical implementability, support for multiple languages and not-for-profit internationally shared ownership,” he said.
Broad and deep coverage of the healthcare domain reduces or removes the need for alternative specialized codes or terminologies, Markwell said, adding that the SNOMED CT design is “centered on concepts rather than terms further reduces variability of representation of clinical information. Together these factors contribute to greater consistency leading to a significant simplification of clinical analytics.”
In a HIMSS17 session, Markwell will focus on a variety of approaches using SNOMED CT to address different clinical analytics use cases, such as historical summaries, clinical decision support, population health and clinical research, along with an overview of guidance developed during a study of analytics deployments.
He will also cover practical experience from EHR vendors, healthcare provider organizations and other stakeholders, including benefits realization and challenges.
“In the presentation I summarize the ways in which a terminology that meets these requirements assists with analyzing clinical information in electronic health records.”
Markwell’s session, “Enabling Advanced EHR Analytics with Clinical Terminology,” is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 23, at noon in Room 207C.
HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
