A key aspect of SNOMED CT implementations is how the terminology is presented to the user with the objective of selecting clinical ideas to represent in medical records. For each use case a User Interface is designed, where the user can search by entering terms or where the implementer prepares a structured UI that guides the user over a controlled set of options, appropriate for the scenario.
Good practices
The Search and Data Entry Guide covers all the considerations for developing SNOMED CT User Interfaces. From the content of the guide, these are 5 important considerations for the development of Search and Data Entry User Interfaces:
- The UI should be customized to the use case
- Different UIs for point of care data entry and for SNOMED CT browsing.
- Text search should flexible
- Allow to search by partial matches, it should ignore the order of terms, and other normalizations could be applied in specific use cases.
- The order of the results is important
- Ordering the shortest matching term first is a common technique, other options may apply in special use cases, like considering frequency of use of each result.
- Structured data entry can be applied to support effective data entry and ensure consistent use of Concepts
- Designing custom, structure data entry UIs where the user directly selects SNOMED CT content can simplify the use of SNOMED CT in very specific use cases.
- Data entry should be constrained for each specific scenario
- Different parameters like refset memberships or concept ancestors can be applied to filter the options presented to the user in order to adjust the content to a particular use case or clinical speciality.
SNOMED CT User Interface examples
SNOMED International has prepared a demonstration available in: https://ihtsdo.github.io/snomed-ui-examples/
This example simulates the user interface of a typical electronic clinical records application, allowing the user to represent diagnosis, procedures, allergies, etc. using different techniques described in the Search and Data Entry Guide.
The source code for this demonstration app is available in https://github.com/IHTSDO/snomed-ui-examples.
This Demonstration Guide can help a user to go through the different components of the demonstration, explaining the rationale behind the design of the functionalities.
Other UI Demonstrations
- Argentina National Release Center UI Demonstration, using a Snowstorm Terminology Server
- Demo: https://openrsd.msal.gov.ar/
- Source code: https://github.com/SALUD-AR/Open-RSD
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