This SNOMED CT Implementation Guide for Allergy, Hypersensitivity, and Intolerance provides comprehensive guidance for healthcare providers, information managers, and software developers who are seeking a standardized approach to document adverse sensitivity data (which encompasses allergy, non-allergic hypersensitivity and intolerance) and adverse reactions to substances in patients. The guide is designed to address the need for clear and uniform best practices for documenting adverse sensitivity and understanding how SNOMED CT can be applied within this domain.
The guide is organized into five main chapters, beginning with an introduction that outlines the objectives, scope, and target audience. The second chapter focuses on the key use cases that motivated the creation of this guide, providing clinical scenarios where SNOMED CT implementation is beneficial within the domain of allergy, hypersensitivity, and intolerance.
Chapter three elaborates on how SNOMED CT addresses the terminological needs within this domain, including relevant editorial policies and concept model rules established to ensure the quality of the content. Chapter four introduces HL7 FHIR as a recommended data exchange format/structure to facilitate the harmonization and interoperability of data within this domain. It also clarifies the bindings between HL7 FHIR AllergyIntolerance resouce elements and value sets and SNOMED CT. Finally, chapter five presents technical considerations related to the joint implementation of SNOMED CT and FHIR for allergy-related data capture, including two main ways to document adverse sensitivity in the EHR, which are supported by SNOMED CT: substance-focused and findings-focused models.
Overall, this SNOMED CT Implementation Guide provides practical guidance for healthcare providers, information managers, and software developers looking to integrate SNOMED CT into their workflows within the domain of allergy, hypersensitivity, and intolerance. It represents a culmination of work started by the Implementation SIG in 2014 and continued by the SNOMED International Clinical Reference Group for Allergies/Hypersensitivity starting in 2020.
The guide is particularly relevant for clinicians who are interested in understanding how SNOMED CT can support the needs for clinical documentation, clinical decision support and data sharing in the domain of allergy, hypersensitivity, and intolerance. It is also useful for information managers to learn how SNOMED CT can be integrated into health information models within this domain. Finally, software developers can learn how to integrate SNOMED CT into software applications in this domain and to exchange clinical data using HL7 FHIR.
