How does this project fit with the strategy?

This will be a key part of enabling a platform (both terminology and technology) to deliver on the three strategic directions of SNOMED International:

• Product: Enable continuous development of the product to meet customer requirements 

• Adoption: Provide scalable products and services that remove barriers to drive adoption of SNOMED CT

• Innovation: Leverage new trends and technologies that benefit SNOMED CT and its stakeholders

Team

SNOMED International Project owner:

@Rory Davidson

Team members:

Status

in startup mode

Why are we doing this?

Problem statement

The perceived speed of SNOMED CT content changes and additions is not sufficient to keep up with the pace of changes requested globally. There are also known issues in the structure of the terminology that have grown over time, and a concerted effort is needed to fix these. Some of this can be done through technology solutions, but the capacity to process the changes is always limited to a single team within SNOMED International.

This has been mitigated by the creation of missing content in local, national extensions, but this gives more overhead to National Release Centres (NRC) that have to then maintain the extension/edition.

Content is then promoted to the International Edition and despite best endeavours, this can take time due to capacity and the restrictions of a twice a year release.

Impact of this problem

SNOMED CT is at risk of slipping behind competing terminologies. More importantly, as SNOMED CT begins to be used in more advanced contexts and data analysis, fixing the quality concerns becomes a priority.

How do we judge success?

• Quicker, more timely turnaround of content requests

• More capacity to manage quality improvements in SNOMED CT

• Easier promotion of locally created content from Member NRCs and Implementors

What are possible solutions?

The provision of possible solutions is part of this working group's objective

What do we already know?

• Current promotion is slow (miss a deadline and your content may not appear for at least 6 months)

• Although the technology exists, current promotion only involves the concept identifier, and not all component identifiers, causing local extension/edition headaches when merging in the new international edition release containing the promoted content

• Current twice a year release cycle is not sufficient to enable more timely promotion

What do we need to answer?

• How do we do large scale review/quality assurance/gatekeeping of content authored outside of SNOMED International? This will be the bottleneck

• What is the impact of more frequent International Edition releases on:

  • SNOMED International Content Team

  • Member NRCs

  • Implementors

• How will a potential increased volume of content be maintained in the future? This will not be possible if only done by the SNOMED International Content Team, but could it raise the orgainzation's risk profile if done externally?

What are we doing?

Producing a high level solution which covers the business and technology to be then taken for wider consultation with internal SNOMED International staff and with SNOMED International Members (as a starting point)

Why would a SNOMED International member of staff want this?

With a more frequent release process, there would be less downtime and improved QA. The opportunity to make any changes based on feedback moves from once every 6 months to (possibly) the following month.

Why will a SNOMED International Member want this?

Less need for local content (outside of translations) with quicker addition of missing content. This could result in less 'work' for local NRCs with decreased amount of content to maintain locally.

Why will a vendor implementing SNOMED CT want this?

Higher quality product, and more responsive turnaround both locally and globally to feedback from the vendor community.

Visualize the solution

Scale and scope