Pediatric Informatics: Computer Applications in Child Health (Health ...

Chapter 33
The Case for a Pediatric Terminology
George R. Kim and S. Trent Rosenbloom
Objectives
To provide an overview of the roles and importance of terminologies in
health care
To articulate problems and challenges with current terminologies in pediatrics
To describe current projects in pediatric terminology development
33.1 Introduction
Terminologies are structured collections of designations (“terms”) that describe
entities and relationships that represent the knowledge within a given domain. 1,2
Terms may consist of words, phrases, or other notations (such as numbers or
symbols), and are designed to support communication, storage, retrieval, and use
of knowledge and information by humans and machines. An example is the clinical
entity of “blood pressure measured during the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle,”
which is designated (in the terminology SNOMED CT) by the preferred term
“Diastolic blood pressure” and the concept identifier “271650006.” Terminologies
can formally define and specify representation of information content, and when
used with messaging standards, can support structured information exchange
among different electronic patient care systems. Terminologies have been developed
with differing levels of rigor, and best practices have been described. 2,8
33.2 Terminologies in Health Care
33.2.1 Uses
There are numerous terminologies designed to support various clinical domains and
operational tasks within healthcare. Examples include:
C.U. Lehmann et al. (eds.), Pediatric Informatics: Computer Applications 429
in Child Health, Health Informatics,
© Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009