Addressing SNOMED CT Implementation Challenges Through Multi-disciplinary Collaboration

This article describes the challenges of implementing SNOMED CT into electronic clinical documentation systems for discharge summaries, synoptic operative notes and ambulatory documentation. Four significant implementation challenges were identified throughout these projects, which required collaboration between specialists across several disciplines to resolve. The challenges included: designing the graphical user interface for selecting SNOMED CT values, gathering and validating template specifications that use SNOMED CT subsets, handling SNOMED CT subsets and extensions, and, creating algorithms and the technological infrastructure to generate fast, meaningful, non-redundant search results. Our experiences suggest that, while the usage of SNOMED CT in tertiary care settings is promising, collaboration between specialists from multiple disciplines is needed to utilize their unique project management, data modeling, technical, and clinical skills in overcoming implementation challenges.