Poster presented in the WHO-FIC meeting

1. Introduction
Terminology servers provide functionalities to browse, query, search on, manage and develop controlled vocabularies and their elements, subsets and mappings. These tools also offer other functionalities for SNOMED CT like the extensions manager one or the support to create post-coordinated expressions. These functionalities can be provided in two modes:
•Through a (web) user interface.
•Consuming (web) services. This duality allow us create a subset of SNOMED CT using the user interface and to list or search on the elements of this subset in a end-user application, like a CWS, invoking a Web Service (WS). Terminology Servers helps us managing controlled vocabularies and using them to encode clinical information.
How to use terminology servers from Clinical WorkStations
Abstract Terminology servers are tools designed specially to allow us work with controlled vocabularies. We can use these tools directly to manage and develop semantic resources but we can also use their services to obtain controlled vocabularies in other applications, like Clinical WorkStations (CWS) of healthcare professionals. Thanks this approach we can support physicians in encoding of recorded information without working with codes.
11-17 October 2014 Barcelona, Spain
Poster Number
WHO/CTS to insert
WHO - FAMILY OF INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS NETWORK ANNUAL MEETING 2014
Authors: Rius A, Graupera A, Pratdepàdua C, Ayza J, Janer L Tecnocampus Mataró-Maresme, Barcelona (Spain)
arius@tecnocampus.cat
Methods & Materials
To support the clinical information encoding when it is being recorded we use a WS from a terminology server that returns all descriptions matching with the word(s) that the professional is looking for in a search field:
1.Physician starts writing the word(s) in a field of his or her CWS.
2.WS is called on each key-press, returning the most similar results as proposals.
3.When physician chooses a description, it is a term of a controlled vocabulary associated to a code.
4.The encoded information is stored in the centre’s information system. To control the input information we limit the results of the WS to a concrete vocabulary (or subset) and in case of multi-hierarchy terminologies like SNOMED CT we filter by axis too.
Results
We have developed a simulated CWS environment with different fields that are filled in invoking WS. Three of these fields allow us to encode vaccines administered to patients that have caused adverse reactions and their route of administration:
•First field is a search area where user can enter vaccines’ name and the invoked WS returns more similar descriptions of the immunizations’ subset of SNOMED CT, created through the web user interface.
•Second field is a drop-down list whose elements are descriptions of the subset of routes of administration.
•Third one is another search area filtered by the subset of adverse reactions. When the user selects terms in these fields the information is stored encoded.
Conclusions
Having the support of terminology servers, physicians can record encoded information without being necessary for them to work directly with codes and applying controls related to the domain of the system’s input information. With these tools healthcare organizations can manage their semantic ecosystems, maximizing the available structured information, improving the quality of the recorded data and promoting research and innovation projects.
Figure 1. Subset of immunizations in ITServer Terminology Server.
Figure 2. Result of invoking the searchTermsInSubet WS, looking for “hepa”.
Figure 3. Simulated Clinical Work station with fields filled invoking WS.