Expected project resource requirement category

This content project in isolation does not require project management and can be implemented by the content team. However, implementation of this content project would be resource intensive and requires input from the technical team in order to make large-scale changes to both descriptions and relationships to prevent the need for multiple manual editing changes. Quality review of the changes will be required and this will be a labour intensive activity.

Expected project impact and benefit

It is acknowledged that changes to this area of content do not appear to be a high priority with end users, perhaps because issues with coding in this area of imaging have a lower financial impact. However the problems as outlined in this project are not confined to one area of SNOMED CT, the procedure hierarchy impacts on the clinical finding and situation hierarchy. The implementation of this project will benefit end users by improving the quality of existing and future content.

Indicative resource estimates for construction, transition and maintenance:

Approximately 800 existing concepts to be reviewed and changes made where necessary. Likely resource requirements for this are as follows:
800 existing concepts to be reviewed and changes made to align with new policy at a rate of 20 concepts per day would mean that one terminologist could implement the required changes in 8 working weeks. As outlined above, this estimate could be substantially reduced if the data changes are implemented directly by the technical team and then reviewed by a content editor prior to release.
Existing SIRS requests (approximately 160 requests) are to be reviewed and added to SNOMED CT.
Maintenance is not required assuming that going forward new content follows the recommended approach for term construction and modelling.