I have the pleasure of being involved with the annual meeting for the Society for Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia. This year, the event is being held in Cardiff.
I recently came across a paper which espoused the virtues of using openEHR as the basis for a data warehouse which made me think about the wider attributes of that underlying reference model.
A recent article in the British Journal of General Practice described interoperability in a problematic way. This post argues the necessity to broaden that definition into technical, semantic and clinical interoperability.
As part of some work on recording Adverse Reaction Risks, we took the opportunity to look at binding SNOMED CT into the service. We approached the problem is a very linear way: we need a list of "stuff" that could cause a patient to have an allergic or intolerant reaction. There are a myriad of different term sets available, and SNOMED CT itself has its own. However, by combining a substance with the allergic response you are potentially overly constraining the number of options available to an application. My theory was to record the allergic process separately from the causative agent, and this was backed up by some sterling work by colleagues in the office on patient discharge data. The standard list that SNOMED
The recent report by the Welsh Audit Office, “Informatics Systems in NHS Wales” has some interesting points. But there are some problems with their logic.