The EDQM to SNOMED CT dose form map was developed to support a range of use cases, including:

• Authoring a SNOMED CT drug extension, based on authorised product information that uses EDQM dose forms;
• Linking a medication product dictionary to international drug concepts for patient care;
• International interoperability of medication information;
• Decision support; and
• Mapping IDMP-compliant regulatory database to SNOMED CT

This section describes each of these use cases in more detail.

Authoring a SNOMED CT Drug Extension

• The national extension wants to represent authorised (real/branded) medicinal products in a SNOMED CT drug extension as RCDs, based on the authorised product information (section 3 of SmPC)
• The authorised product information uses EDQM dose forms

Therefore: a map from EDQM dose forms to SNOMED CT dose forms significantly helps the authoring of the RCDs, because “pharmaceutical dose form” is a definitional attribute of an RCD

National use of international concepts in patient care

• An organisation wants to map concepts from a national or local medication product dictionary (MPD) to international SNOMED CT clinical drugs for the patient medication process - prescribing/dispensing/administration/recording
  “Prescription” uses abstract concepts (from the international edition) but these must be matched to a local authorised product for dispensing/administration
• Many or all of the concepts in the MPD use EDQM dose forms as their dose form

Therefore: a map from EDQM dose forms to SNOMED CT dose forms significantly helps the mapping because “pharmaceutical dose form” is a definitional attribute of a SNOMED CT clinical drug and is usually a stated attribute of the concept in the MPD.  By mapping at attribute level, much of the concept level mapping can be “automated” (at least initially)

International interoperability of medication information

• An organisation wants to map concepts from a national or local medication product dictionary (MPD) to international SNOMED CT clinical drugs for interoperability purposes, such as the sharing of medication lists for cross-border patient-care, pharmacovigilance and clinical research
• Many or all of the concepts in the MPD use EDQM dose forms as their dose form

Therefore: a map from EDQM dose forms to SNOMED CT dose forms significantly helps the mapping because “pharmaceutical dose form” is a definitional attribute of a SNOMED CT clinical drug and is usually a stated attribute of the concept in the MPD.  By mapping at attribute level, much of the concept level mapping can be “automated” (at least initially)

Decision support

• An organisation wants to manage medication decision support data using “international” medication concepts, so uses SNOMED CT and its structures, either directly or indirectly
• It then needs to map from local MPD to SNOMED CT for implementation (if the local MPD is not already mapped to SNOMED CT)
• It may also want to “stream in” IDMP data for processing in its decision support system (as in UC4)

Therefore: a map from EDQM dose forms to SNOMED CT dose forms significantly helps the mapping because “pharmaceutical dose form” is a definitional attribute of a SNOMED CT clinical drug and is usually a stated attribute of the concept in the MPD.  By mapping at attribute level, much of the concept level mapping can be “automated” (at least initially)

Note: in many ways, this UC is another view on all of the previous use cases, since it involves mapping from local/national MPD to SNOMED CT, using authorised product data etc.

IDMP / UNICOM

• An organisation wants to map data from an IDMP-compliant regulatory database of medicinal products to SNOMED CT concepts
• An IDMP-compliant regulatory database should EDQM dose forms as their dose form

Therefore: a map from EDQM dose forms to SNOMED CT dose forms significantly helps the mapping because “pharmaceutical dose form” is a core part of SNOMED CT medicinal product information

Note: in many ways, this UC is another view on all three of the previous use cases, but we document it separately because of the importance of UNICOM, especially to our European members