Swiss eLogbook using Ontoserver and SNOMED CT
The Swiss Institute for Medical Education in Switzerland, has used Ontoserver for their eLogbook for trainees
“Ontoserver is the only product we looked at that was practical to use without having a big overhead by still packing a lot of usable functionality. It was easy to deploy and implement and additional tools like shrimp give it even more value.”
Who is The Swiss Institute for Medical Education?
The Swiss Institute for Medical Education (SIME) is the competence center in the field in Switzerland for the medical profession, authorities and postgraduate training centers. Bringing together the main actors and organisations from the sector, this autonomous institute of the Swiss Medical Association (FMH) guarantees doctors a postgraduate training and further education of high quality in more than 120 specialised fields.
The Challenge
Trainees are required to perform multiple procedures such as operations and/or examinations during their postgraduate training. Those procedures and all other requirements are defined as free text strings in legal documents by the respective professional society. If a trainee can prove that all the requirements in one of those documents have been met, he or she may apply for the corresponding medical specialist title.
The eLogbook is the software which the trainees use to document all their procedures and apply for a medical specialist title. Trainees can change their postgraduate training track at any time during the training process, so it is important that the trainee can document the procedures in a coded way, which can then be mapped to the different strings defined in the respective legal document.
Outcomes
By mapping the different strings of the procedures defined by the professional societies to SNOMED CT the SIME gives the trainees the possibility to document their procedures in a coded way. This allows the trainees to change their track without having to re-enter the already performed procedures.
To achieve this the SIME developed the possibility to map the free text strings of the different procedures to one or multiple SNOMED CT concepts using ECL queries in the eLogbook. By approving the mapping, a specialty society can then allow its trainees to record their procedures using SNOMED CT and automatically transfer them to mapped procedures of other tracks.
On supported postgraduate training tracks Trainees can enter their information in a coded manner using SNOMED CT and are able to switch tracks without the need to re-enter their performed procedures.
Future plans
As a next step the mapping of the procedures has to be discussed and approved by the different specialty societies to allow the documentation using SNOMED CT. In the future new procedures should directly be defined by using SNOMED CT.