Computer Access to SNOMED-CT Medical Vocabulary
SNOMED-CT [Systemic Nomenclature of Medicine] [Clinical Terms] is an international hierarchical clinical terminology that was developed collaboratively by the NHSIA [NHS Information Authority] and CAP [College of American Pathologists]. It is anticipated that this set of terminology, which combines the CAP’s Systematic Nomenclature of Medicine [SNOMED RT] and Version 3 of the NHS’s Read Clinical Terms [CT], will become very useful to health professionals in both the UK and US in the next few years. With the help of a computer service to access this standardised medical vocabulary, health professionals will be able to more easily manage patients’ medical records and exchange clinical research information.
The aim of this project therefore was to develop a computer service that will enable users to access the SNOMED-CT database. Ideally, the interface must allow various types of word searches to be performed. Thus, users will be able to submit a medical word or phrase and the service will then retrieve from the database the relevant code[s]. Users will also be able to navigate through medical terms based on the hierarchical structure of the information in the database. [PDF to HTML conversion tool available from: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_simple_form.html]
Further info
- Team leader: Jennifer Shu [MIT summer student]
- Supervisors: John Norman [Director of CBCL], Brian Rous [Research Associate]
- Technologies: Java, JSP [Java Server Pages], servlets, SQL [Structured Query
Language], SQL server database, HTML [Hypertext Markup Language] - Funding: SIFT [Service Increment For Teaching] and HEFCE [the Higher Education
Funding Council for England] - Start: July – August 2002