Clinical terminology SNOMED CT: experiences from the implementation of a terminology standard in the Swedish region of Västra Götaland

The Västra Götaland region is the first region to implement the Snomed CT standard in Sweden to standardise the clinical terminology within the region. This happens at the same time as the region undergoes a huge undertaking to implement a new medical record system – Millennium, that only partially supports the Snomed CT standard. Which imposes challenges when the region wants to utilise the standard to create a decision support system to provide individual-based diagnosis and treatment. This is a portrayal of the initial phase of the implementation of the Snomed CT on what challenges and lessons the region has acquired in the implementation of clinical terminology standards aimed to achieve seamless reuse of patient and healthcare information in the region.

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Implementation of SNOMED CT clinical ontology within the Swedish healthcare sector from a Covid-19 perspective

The National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) in Sweden has been working with the Snomed CT standard since the mid-2000s, to enable seamless national exchange of information within the healthcare sector. The Covid-19 pandemic has showed how much work that remains to implement seamless exchange of information between regions and authorities in Sweden. We have talked to the NBHW about challenges and lessons learned about implementing semantic interoperability.

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RDF elementary guide part 3: SPARQL querying knowledge graphs and datasets with semantic meaning

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is an open standard by W3C for describing concepts and resources digitally with semantic meaning. The SPARQL standard is syntax and protocol for making querying and manipulating datasets in RDF format. The standard is comprehensive and includes everything from searching, updating, exporting and maintaining RDF datasets and can be compared with the SQL standard for relational databases. With the difference that SPARQL is applied to datasets with triplets pattern – subject, predicate, object and has a semantic meaning. The guide is based on the previously presented knowledge graph with artists and paintings.

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RDF elementary guide part 2: Creating Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs with RDF-Schema

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is an open standard by W3C to describe concepts and resources digitally with semantic meaning. Data described in RDF format can be exchanged and reused with retained conceptual understanding of concepts between businesses, industries and countries. This is the second article in a series that introduce the basics of describing digital resources with semantic meaning. The model in the article interlink resource descriptions from Wikidata (Wikipedia) to relate to equivalent concepts to create context. The previous article describe how classes and properties are defined with RDF-Schema (RDFS).

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RDF elementary guide part 1: Class and property definition in RDF-Schema

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is an open standard of the W3C to describe digital resources with semantic meaning. Data described in RDF format can be exchanged and reused while maintaining a conceptual understanding of resources between businesses, industries and countries. This is the first article in a series of guides to get started describing data with semantic meaning. The first article describes how concepts with associated attributes are defined with RDF-Schema.

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