Introduction

Background

SNOMED CT is a clinically validated, semantically rich, controlled terminology. SNOMED CT is comprised of meaning-based concepts, human-readable descriptions and machine-readable definitions. SNOMED CT is used within electronic health records to support data capture, retrieval, and subsequent reuse for a wide range of purposes. SNOMED CT is also used to enable or enhance analysis of patient records and other clinical documents containing no original SNOMED CT content.

SNOMED CT hierarchies and formal concept definitions allow selective information retrieval to support analysis – from patient-based queries to operational reporting, public health reporting, strategic planning, predictive medicine and clinical research. As the SNOMED CT encoding of healthcare data increases, so too have the benefits being realized from analytics processes performed over this data.

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to review current approaches, tools and techniques for performing data analytics using SNOMED CT and to share developing practice in this area. It is anticipated that this report will benefit members, vendors and users of SNOMED CT by promoting a greater awareness of both what has been achieved, and what can be achieved by using SNOMED CT to enhance analytics services.

Scope

This document presents different data approaches, tools, terminology techniques, query languages, data architectures and user interfaces that may be used in performing analytics using SNOMED CT. Analytics services considered include patient-based queries, operational reporting, the application and audit of evidence-based medical practice, strategic planning, predictive medicine, public health reporting and clinical research. The benefits and challenges of these approaches are also presented. The case study summaries describe a selection of SNOMED CT analytics projects and tools.

This document does not provide an exhaustive list of analytics projects and tools, and does not mandate a specific approach. The development of is also outside of the scope of this document.

Audience

The target audience of this document includes:

• Members who wish to learn about current analytics activities in other jurisdictions and inform future directions;

• Clinicians, informatics specialists and technical staff involved in the planning, management, design or implementation of clinical record applications or healthcare analytics tools;

• Software vendors, data analysts, epidemiologists and others designing SNOMED CT based solutions.

This document assumes a basic level of understanding of SNOMED CT. For background information, it is recommended that the reader refer to the SNOMED CT Starter Guide.