Role

Virtual Clinical Group

The role of the Virtual Clinical Group is to provide a mechanism for sharing clinical expertise and experience. The group aims to create a virtual community focused on a clinical specialty topic area. 

The group will provide a mechanism for:

  • Sharing good practice
  • Supporting discussion items
  • Issue resolution
  • Identification of international terminology requirements (new or revised)
  • Identification of clinical focussed derivatives (new or revised)
  • Provision of expert advice

Clinical Coordination Group

The role of the Clinical Coordination Group is to provide oversight of the activities of the Virtual Clinical groups. The Clinical Coordination Group will:
  • Agree formation of a new Virtual Clinical Group
  • Review work requests from Virtual Clinical Groups and provide recommendations
  • Provide oversight and cross fertilization of discussions/activities across all Virtual Clinical Groups
  • Provide mechanism for reaching agreement on conflicting clinical content requirements

 

Membership

All Virtual Clinical Groups have an open membership. Whilst the group is targeted at a specific clinical specialty, there may also be areas that are cross-cutting across specialties and therefore the membership would predominantly be from the specialty. Membership is open to anyone with an interest in that clinical area. We actively support the inclusion of vendors and implementers as part of the group, to encourage the development of both content and derivative products that can easily and quickly be used within systems and meet requirements being identified.

Meetings

Whilst the Virtual Clinical Groups by there very nature are virtual, that does not mean that if required the group cannot arrange to have a virtual meeting. Details of the process for doing this are included on each Virtual Clinical Group Confluence page.

In addition, in future, if the group identifies a requirement to meet face to face, this should be documented by the group and forward to the Clinical Coordination group for consideration

Accountability

Each Virtual Clinical Group is accountable to the Clinical Coordination Group.  

 

Group structure

The Virtual Clinical Groups will operate predominately as a community of practice, supporting discussions on specific topics. As such, the group will have no formal chair. In the initial stages of the group, it is expected that discussion items will be generated by group members and from SNOMED International staff. Overtime the expectation is that individuals from within the group will take on a more active role identifying discussions items, although SNOMED International may still ask for information from the group. Overtime the individuals taking on a leading role will look to adopting a leadership role and supporting development of use case requirements by the group.

Virtual Clinical groups will be put in place where there is a stated and documented use case requirement to do so. Requirements will be reviewed by the Clinical Coordination Group, and the decision made on group creation. If over time the group becomes inactive, a decision will be made by the Clinical coordination Group whether to continue with support of the group, or whether to close the group.

Clinical Coordination Group

The Clinical Coordination Group will provide oversight and input into the Virtual Clinical Groups. There are no formal reporting requirements between the Virtual Clinical Group, however the Clinical Coordination Group will oversee and report on the activities of all Virtual Clinical groups to the SNOMED International Management Team. The Clinical Coordination Group will supply the Management Team with a quarterly review of the activities of all the Virtual Clinical groups, which will include recommendations for future work items identified by the Virtual Clinical groups. In addition, suggestions for work items from the Virtual Clinical groups will be reviewed by the Clinical Coordination Group, who will make recommendations on how to proceed with the suggestions.  If the suggestion is to move forward as a formal work item, the Clinical Coordination Group will manage and support the process

 

Openness and Transparency

The ways of working of the Virtual Clinical Groups support inclusiveness, through the open membership of the group and also by encouraging all members to take a active role within group discussions. 

All the Virtual Clinical Groups are allocated a home page within Confluence. These pages are available to view by anyone, irrespective of whether you are logged into Confluence. However, to take an active part in the group discussions, individuals must have a Confluence account, and must be logged into Confluence. This ensure that all comments and discussions are attributed to the individual that created them

 

International Perspective

The aim of all discussions in the Virtual Clinical Groups are to provide an International perspective on a topic. Whilst discussions will obviously include examples and issues raised by members that arise from local/national perspectives, it should be understood that any requirements elicited from the group must provide an internationally accepted solution.

 

Moderation

The SNOMED International Clinical Engagement Team will work to provide any required moderation VCG's, reviewing ongoing discussions, ensuring discussions are inclusive and delaing with SNOMED International specific points. If points are raised within discussions that are sensitive to individuals or organisations, SNOMED International reserve the right to discuss with the contributor and removing the point through mutual agreement.