Social care content requirements project

Purpose

This project marks a shift from the traditional clinical coverage/usage of SNOMED CT for supporting information requirements of healthcare to expanding to include the information requirements for social care. It is acknowledged that there is existing content in SNOMED CT that could be used to support social care but this has not to date been used routinely and proven to be fit for purpose.  Potentially the project represents a substantial rework to SNOMED CT, as it currently stands, but the requirements gathering will provide guidance in this matter. The project will require large scale resource allocation, and also involves complexity due to the interplay between healthcare and social care sectors. As such the project should be undertaken with a robust governance process in place which incorporates knowledge and skills of those working in the social care sector to ensure we remove any healthcare bias. If we do not acknowledge from the beginning that social care requirements come from a different perspective we will create content that is not acceptable or usable. 

The current landscape of SNOMED CT has been exclusively developed for use in the healthcare domain. The assumption is that the work to enhance SNOMED CT within social care content, will open up the market to social care vendors, thereby meeting the use case requirements of both the health and social care sectors and supporting interoperability and transfer of care.

Scope

The Social Care survey identified 3 priority areas for development which will form the focus of the project. In addition,  a further area may naturally need to be included, ‘Services for adults with  learning and physical disability’, because this area covers the interface between traditional healthcare services and those provided through social service provision and social care issues that overlap with the 3 priority areas. Therefore, at this time, the areas for targeted content development in the project are as follows:

Focus topic areas

• Older people (Services for older people that includes homecare support, long term care and palliative care)
• Mental health (Services for people with mental health problems)
• Alcohol and substance misuse (Services for people with alcohol and substance misuse problems)