Why Do We Need Standard Terminology in Health Informatics?
Standard terminology provides a foundation for interoperability by improving the effectiveness of information exchange. Using standard terminology should be a simple and logical step in health it. However, with the complexities of many diagnoses systems, clinical narrative transferred via PDF format, various coding systems, and the cost of digitizing volumes of reference material/dictionaries, it isn’t as easy as you would think.
Structured terms provide a means for organizing information and serve to define the semantics of information using consistent and computable mechanisms. Therefore, health information specialists need the tools to focus on delivering terminology through a common delivery system to the software vendors and institutions in a consistent, high quality and verifiable fashion. Vendors and institutions need to be able to write applications that access terminology content, be it SNOMED, immunization data, demographics, LOINC, or a coding system local to the institution in exactly the same way.
To address this challenge, computer engineers and architects have developed the Common Terminology Services 2 (CTS2) specification to automate some of these terminology mapping processes. Harold Solbrig from the Mayo Clinic is currently working on the CTS2 specification to automate standardization of health IT terms. The CTS2 standard is designed to serve as a “blueprint” for terminology.