Currently designation.use allows to specify that the designation is a synonym or a fully specified name. It is proposed that "Consumer-friendly term" is to be added to the value set.
By SNOMED standards, there are three distinct aspects that should be managed by designation.*:
- the description type (Synonym or Fully specified name (or Definition), <900000000000446008 |Description type (core metadata concept)|)
- the language reference set (e.g. 900000000000508004 | Great Britain English language reference set (foundation metadata concept) |, 281000210109 | NZ patient-friendly language reference set (foundation metadata concept) |, 500191000057100 | Laboratory medicine context language type reference set (foundation metadata concept) |. <900000000000506000 | Language type reference set (foundation metadata concept) |)
- the acceptability of the description in that language reference set (<900000000000511003 | Acceptability (foundation metadata concept) |)
Specification of these aspects would be required for both querying (term filtering with $expand, I cannot see that the specification allows this!) and for results ($lookup and $expand). $expand has distinct IN parameters whereas $lookup relies on properties. The language for X.display is specified by displayLanguage parameter for $lookup and $expand.
Proposal to create an extension to designation to allow unambiguous specification of the three aspects above, including a specification on how designation.use shall be used with SNOMED CT.
Behavior when parameters are not specified (defaults) and/or when there are no descriptions meeting criteria (fall back) should be specified.