PHAST

Using SNOMED CT to build a reference data catalogue for hospital resource management

EMEA

Collaboration, Data quality, Implementation, Innovation, Mapping

In the wake of the Covid crisis, vendors have been rolling out hospital resource management software to help French hospitals improve the use of their medical resources (beds, staff, imaging equipment, ...). The core principle of which is to link health conditions to hospital resources, so that each new patient registration results in appropriate booking of resources. Currently, hospitals are required to define their own list of health conditions, a process that has many shortcomings ranging from costly delays to lack of interoperability. PHAST's goal is to create a national list, TIO, that vendors can integrate quickly and securely, and that hospitals can easily customise and maintain.

Description

THE PROJECT AIMS TO DESIGN A LIST OF CLINICAL CONDITIONS RELATING TO SPECIFIC HOSPITAL RESOURCES (TIO) WHICH CAN BE INTEGRATED WITHIN HOSPITAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE. THE PROJECT COVERS A RANGE OF ISSUES: (1) FINDING THE METHOD; (2) PRODUCING & MAINTAINING THIS LIST ACCORDINGLY; (3) FINDING A CONSENSUS WITH VENDORS ABOUT THE TIO FORMAT AND INTEGRATION RULES; (4) PROVIDING A TOOL TO EDIT TIO, ALLOWING EACH HOSPITAL TO CUSTOMISE THE LIST; (5) PROVIDING A SERVICE TO MAINTAIN THESE CUSTOMISED LISTS REMOTELY; (6) CONVINCING HOSPITAL MANAGERS THAT SEMANTIC INTEROPERABILITY IS NECESSARY TO IMPLEMENT AND RUN HOSPITAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE.

Scope

For the TIO project, SNOMED CT serves as the central terminology to ensure interoperability and facilitate the creation of a curated list of clinical situations for hospital resource management. By providing a unique concept for each clinical expression, SNOMED CT enables semantic interoperability, overcoming challenges posed by diverse local terms and abbreviations. Furthermore, SNOMED CT's inherent structure allows for semantic enrichment through automated reasoning and the potential for defining relevant groupings using its relationships. For instance, Expression Constraint Language (ECL) queries based on anatomical locations can be created to aid in assigning a medical specialty to a group of expressions. Consequently, this strategic use of SNOMED CT transforms TIO into a valuable asset for predicting patient pathways and optimising healthcare resources allocation.

How SNOMED CT will be used

TIO is a list of common medical terms, including synonyms and acronyms, each of which is coded by PHAST using SNOMED CT. The unique meanings of SNOMED CT concept codes provide the backbone of TIO. This also allows TIO to have a reliable mapping of TIO terms with the French version of ICD-10, as well as the French classification procedure, (CCAM). As SNOMED CT is comprehensive, with compositional grammar to express complex concepts, it covers all granularity levels, and has a dedicated request language (ECL), SNOMED CT provides all the necessary features for TIO to operate.