Research

Enriching a primary health care version of ICD-10 using SNOMED CT mapping

Mikael Nyström¹ , Anna Vikström² , Gunnar H Nilsson² , Hans Åhlfeldt¹ and Håkan Örman¹

¹  Department of Biomedical Engineering, Linköpings universitet, SE-581 85 Linköping, Sweden

²  Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Center for Family and Community Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, SE-141 83 Huddinge, Sweden

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Biomedical Semantics 2010, 1:7doi:10.1186/2041-1480-1-7

Published:	17 June 2010

Abstract

Background

In order to satisfy different needs, medical terminology systems must have richer structures. This study examines whether a Swedish primary health care version of the mono-hierarchical ICD-10 (KSH97-P) may obtain a richer structure using category and chapter mappings from KSH97-P to SNOMED CT and SNOMED CT's structure. Manually-built mappings from KSH97-P's categories and chapters to SNOMED CT's concepts are used as a starting point.

Results

The mappings are manually evaluated using computer-produced information and a small number of mappings are updated. A new and poly-hierarchical chapter division of KSH97-P's categories has been created using the category and chapter mappings and SNOMED CT's generic structure. In the new chapter division, most categories are included in their original chapters. A considerable number of concepts are included in other chapters than their original chapters. Most of these inclusions can be explained by ICD-10's design. KSH97-P's categories are also extended with attributes using the category mappings and SNOMED CT's defining attribute relationships. About three-fourths of all concepts receive an attribute of type Finding site and about half of all concepts receive an attribute of type Associated morphology. Other types of attributes are less common.

Conclusions

It is possible to use mappings from KSH97-P to SNOMED CT and SNOMED CT's structure to enrich KSH97-P's mono-hierarchical structure with a poly-hierarchical chapter division and attributes of type Finding site and Associated morphology. The final mappings are available as additional files for this paper.