The BIDMC Problem List Vocabulary

In several blog entries, I've been discussing the adoption of SNOMED-CT as the vocabulary to support BIDMC problem lists and our Google Health interface.

The National Library of medicine has mapped 93% of BIDMC problem list terms to SNOMED. The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) has given me permission to share the BIDMC problem list vocabulary and the SNOMED-CT codes on my blog via the following terms

"The SNOMED CT® identifiers are posted with permission from the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO). SNOMED CT is available for use under the terms of the IHTSDO Affiliate License Agreement, which is also Appendix 2 of the License Agreement for Use of the UMLS Metathesaurus. Use of SNOMED CT is free in IHTSDO Member countries (12 countries as of May 2009, including the US), in an additional 49 countries characterized as low-income economies by the World Bank, and for qualifying research projects worldwide. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the US Member of the IHTSDO. For more information, those in the US should contact NLM. Those in other countries should consult the IHTSDO for appropriate contact information."

Our plan is to load these terms into our electronic health record and code all our matching historical problem list data into SNOMED-CT. Our Google and Microsoft interfaces will be changed to send SNOMED-CT so that all problem list data can be mapped to disease monographs and consumer decision support tools.

In June, the NLM will forward us their consolidated list of the 6000 SNOMED-CT coded problems from the leading early adopters of SNOMED in the US. If we find any gaps in this problem list, we'll work with NLM and IHTSDO to fill them.

I hope the BIDMC problem list is helpful to your applications and institutions!