Stream: terminology
Topic: Why use a fhir server?
Virginia Lorenzi (Jul 18 2020 at 04:10):
I would like to know, in the real world, who is actually using FHIR terminology servers in their FHIR work?
When is it actually worth building and using?
And if people are doing FHIR without FHIR terminology servers (which I am guessing is more the norm) how are they dealing with terminology - I assume whatever they have locally?
Do we see terminology servers playing a key role in any of the FHIR accelerator projects?
Thanks.
Grahame Grieve (Jul 18 2020 at 22:28):
yes people are actually using terminology servers - and not just for FHIR implementions; it's intended to be used for system support generally. You can implement FHIR or your system without a terminology server, and most systems that were already developed don't have a terminology service. But they'll have a higher a maintenance cost going forward
Michael Lawley (Jul 19 2020 at 00:46):
We have quite a few commercial customers for our terminology server (Ontoserver), with a varied range of use cases:
- data entry (using
ValueSet/$expand?filter=[search text]) - $validate (data ingress / ESB-like scenarios)
- $translate (for report generation; mapping clinical codes to reporting categories)
- a "central" point for all terminology content in a consistent form
A lot of this is initially driven by a need to use SNOMED CT, and then being able to have a single unified API for interacting with all terminology content.
As @Grahame Grieve says, this is not just for FHIR ecosystems - there's use in non-FHIR environments and even OpenEHR
Virginia Lorenzi (Jul 20 2020 at 04:41):
Looking for help in building the case for it so thanks.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
