Challenges

This section discusses some of the challenges which should be considered when performing analytics over clinical data. Most of these challenges result from the fundamental nature of health record information, and therefore exist irrespective of the code system used. Many of these challenges are able to be mitigated using the unique features of SNOMED CT. The challenges fall into four broad categories:

• Reliability of patient data

• Terminology / information model boundary issues

• Concept definition issues

• Versioning

SNOMED CT offers significant advantages, compared to other code systems, in both performing powerful clinical analytics, and in mitigating many of these challenges.

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