Introduction

Purpose

This document describes a diagrammatic notation for representing the definition of a concept, an expression, or relation between expressions within SNOMED CT. The aim of this guideline is to:

• Provide a consistent, diagramming style in documentation

• Reduce ambiguity and misunderstandings caused by multiple different representations

• Improve the quality of diagrams through a consistent approach, prompting consideration of all relevant aspects

• Increase efficiency, allowing the SNOMED CT community to rapidly exchange ideas

• Reduce effort by providing templates supporting commonly used tools

This guideline is for use in all SNOMED International documentation and is strongly recommended for all other documentation representing SNOMED CT concepts and models.

Alongside this document, templates for Visio, Omni Graffle and PowerPoint are also published.

Who Should Read This Specification?

The intended audience for this document includes members of the SNOMED CT community of practice who wish to diagrammatically represent a SNOMED CT concept or expression.

Rationale

This document defines a recommended form for diagrams representing SNOMED CT concepts.

Historically these diagrams have been created using ad hoc diagramming techniques and styles to express the author's thoughts. Approaches have included borrowing from UML notation and other diagramming standards. However using ad hoc techniques have resulted in:

• Confusion and misinterpretation

  • particularly when applying adapted forms of existing standards such as UML where the reader misinterprets the diagram due to their knowledge of the underpinning standard

• Errors and omissions

  • different diagramming techniques require varying levels of detail, some of which do not force the author to think through all aspects of the idea they wish to express

• Inefficiency

  • having a variety of diagrammatic forms requires more effort and time for the reader to interpret

  • creation of a new diagramming form, or selection from many in use and undocumented forms requires more effort and time from the diagram author

  • creation of diagrams by many different people without tooling support such as diagram templates wastes authoring time

• An inconsistent look and feel for SNOMED International documents

In order to address these issues, a diagramming guideline has been created and is presented in this document. The aim of this guideline is to aid a clear, efficient and consistent method of communication for the SNOMED CT community of practice.

Related Documents

Name	Location
SNOMED CT Glossary	http://snomed.org/gl
SNOMED CT Compositional Grammar	http://snomed.org/scg

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