Discussions

RE Diabetes content update - call for SME input

SNOMED International is undertaking a review and update of Diabetes content in SNOMED CT.

We are putting together a Task and Finish project group  of SMEs to provide advice on current practice. Diabetes care is undertaken by a wide range of specialists and generalists with an interest as part of a multidisciplinary team. In order to ensure that we capture the electronic record keeping requirements of the full team each domain/specialty must be adequately represented.

It is anticipated that the membership of the task and finish group will change according to the subject area being addressed but for each domain we would expect to include the following aspects of the care record:

• Clinical findings
• Assessments and scales
• Investigations
• Relevant diabetes mellitus disorder concepts
• Relevant complications of diabetes mellitus
• Concepts relevant to care that is delivered in the following environments: 
  Hospital
  Community
  Home

Required activities of the group:

The group will provide support and guidance to the clinical terminologist in the following exercises:

1. Review existing descriptions/synonyms to ensure that they represent a true reflection of internationally agreed and understood clinical concepts
2. Review existing Fully Specified Names to ensure that they represent a unique and unambiguous representation of the clinical concept.
3. Be a reference source for the provision of internationally agreed understanding of the pathophysiology, aetiology and management of the various types of diabetes, their complications and clinical management to support the authors in modelling each concept.
4. Identify gaps in existing and make proposals for new content based on evidence of usage.

Methods of working:

Existing SNOMED CT content will be divided up into small reviewable sections based upon clinical domain e.g. diabetes mellitus disorders (types), diabetic eye disorders, diabetic skin disorders, pregnancy and diabetes etc. The appropriate sub group will then review the section and provide feedback over a 2 week period and discuss issues arising in a video conference meeting.

The clinical terminologist will then model and update the content for review and feedback over the following 2 weeks. It is therefore anticipated that each section will take up to 2 months elapse time with 4 video conference meetings and 2 or 3 periods of review estimated at 4 hours per review. More than one section may be worked on in parallel depending upon the membership of the team supporting each section.

All communication will be by email and video conferences. SNOMED International will provide a number of web pages on it's Confluence web site for documenting the project, scheduling meetings, sharing documentation. All video conferences will be recorded and made available for review by the members of the team.

It is anticipated that the project will last for approximately 1 year and publish the project output into SNOMED CT over the next 2 releases in January and July 2019.

If you are interested in participating in this work, please respond to this discussion or contact Paul Amos at pam@snomed.org. If you have further questions, please respond here so that others can also see the information

Responses from those interested should be received no later than 30 June 2018