Definition of the allergies subset of SNOMED CT and incorporation into our electronic health record (EHR)

Our institution is a health care provider in a area of 200,000 inhabitants to the North of Barcelona. Health professionals can incorporate allergies to a patient health record from all care levels: primary care, acute care, hospitalized, long-term care.

A clinical subset of allergies (2,139 concept Id) has been defined using a standard methodology with experts in the domain of allergies, health information managers and experts in SNOMED CT. The table has been incorporated into our EHR and professionals can incorporate allergies and the information appears with special and colored icons and alarms in strategic places of the EHR.

Once allergies are registered locally in a standardized system the next step will be to share this information at higher levels as the Clinical Shared History of Catalonia, at the National Health System (Spain) and in the European project EpSOS.

The domain of allergies is not well represented in the usual classifications such as ICD-10. From SNOMED CT was possible to create a subset responding to the needs of health professionals.