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SNOMED CT Expo 2015
Presentation or Poster Abstract
Implementation of a drug composition service based on UK’s
dm+d model
Presenter: John Charles Mayan III, Department of Health Informatics, Hospital Italiano de Buenos
Aires
Audience
Implementers and commissioners of healthcare systems; professionals interested in the
terminological representation of drugs.
Objectives
The presentation contains lessons learned in the development, implementation and support of the
drug composition service, which supports several institutions in the countries of Argentina and
Uruguay.
Abstract
In the field of pharmacology, standard terminologies are needed to enable the exchange of
information between different actors. The terminological representation of drugs is a complex
process. SNOMED CT represents drugs through the substance and pharmaceutical/biologic product
hierarchies, reaching the generic and substance level of detail. However, more granularity is
needed for the logistics of drug management. Institutions planning to implement these systems
have to design their own data models to support these functions and maintain the corresponding
drug databases. This can be very costly in terms of time and money.
Using terminology services can be a solution to these problems, as the institutions planning an
implementation can avoid the burden of developing and maintaining drug databases. The
Department of Health Informatics at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires developed a terminology
server that uses SNOMED CT as the reference terminology, and a local thesaurus that works as an
interface terminology.
For the drug domain, several approaches were considered. The Department decided to adapt the
model of the National Health Services of the United Kingdom, the dictionary of medicines and
devices (dm+d). This model accounts for the granularity needed for prescription systems, and is
closely related to SNOMED CT. This adapted model is called “drug composition service”, as it allows
the interested parties to obtain the different components of drugs or commercial products with
multiple objectives, such as electronic prescription, generic drug interchangeability, drug logistics,
or more complex ones, such as the implementation of clinical decision support systems in an
electronic health record.
This presentation will outline the lessons learned in the development, implementation and support
of the drug composition service, which supports several institutions in the countries of Argentina
and Uruguay.