Transcript Slide 1

SNOMED CT
IHTSDO Query Language Specification
& IHTSDO Public Consultation
Relevance to analytics
Ed Cheetham, Principal Terminology Specialist
Scope & purpose
• Provide a language specification that should be
used to define an expression that selects
concepts for inclusion in a simple concept
reference set.
– No metadata (which release etc.) specified
• The specification can be used to define value sets
that may be bound to fields in information
models, or to define sets of concepts to be
included or excluded in particular use-cases.
Look and feel
• Functionally
– Presented as a set of functions operating on SNOMED
CT data, and on the outputs of other functions
– Set operations (intersection/union/excludes)
– DAG-specific (children, descendants, leaf, roles)
– Lexical matching
• Syntactically
– Human-readable function names
– Parentheses denote ‘depth-first’ precedence
• Care with non-commutative functions
– Simple commenting convention
Examples
• // This query expression returns concepts in the
Clinical finding sub-hierarchy
• DescendantsAndSelf(404684003|Clinical finding|)
• /* This query expression returns all fully defined
concepts in the Clinical finding
•
* sub-hierarchy */
• FilterOnFullyDefined(DescendantsAndSelf(404684003|
Clinical finding|))
Union(
Descendants(118956008|Body structure altered from its
original|),
Excludes(
Descendants(404684003|Clinical finding|),
Union(
DescendantsAndSelf(307824009|Administrative statuses|),
DescendantsAndSelf(405533003|Adverse incident outcome
categories|),
DescendantsAndSelf(420134006|Propensity to adverse
reactions|),
DescendantsAndSelf(365858006|Prognosis/outlook finding|),
DescendantsAndSelf(285153007|Sequelae of external causes
and disorders|)
)
),
Descendants(272379006|Events|),
Descendants(413350009|Finding with explicit context|),
Descendants(57177007|Family history of|),
Descendants(4908009|Past history of|)
)
Tabular description
Function
Intersection(A, B, C, ..)
Description
Include only concepts that are in reference set A, and that are
also in reference set B and that are also in reference set C. A
concept that is not in all of the input reference sets is not
included in the output reference set. This function takes one
or more arguments.
FilterOnFullyDefined(A)
Include only the concepts in reference set A that are Fully
Defined concepts
Include only concepts in reference set A, that have an active
description matching ‘s'. To be included in the resulting set, at
least one of the concept’s active descriptions should match.
See the next section for a definition of the matching criteria.
FilterOnMatch(s, A)
HasRel(A, B)
Children(A)
MembersOf(NamedRefset)
Include only concepts that have a relationship of a type within
reference set A, to a target concept in reference set B. The
relationship must be ungrouped, and may be inferred from
other relationships.
Include only the direct children of concepts in reference set A
Include only the members of an already defined reference set.
The reference set may either be a static reference set, that is
an enumerated set of concepts, or a dynamic reference set
that must be evaluated from a specification before being
used.
ABNF
expression = ws (intersection / filteronfullydefined /
filteronprimitive / filteronleaf / filteronactive / all /
filteronexcludes / filteroncontains / hasrel / hasdirectrel /
hasgroupedrels / childrenandself / children /
descendantsandself / descendants / excludes / membersof /
union / concept) ws
intersection = “Intersection” ws “(“ expression *(“,” expression)
“)”
filteronfullydefined = “FilterOnFullyDefined” ws “(“ expression
“)”
filteronprimitive = “FilterOnPrimitive” ws “(“ expression “)”
filteronleaf = “FilterOnLeaf” ws “(“ expression “)”
filteronactive = “FilterOnActive” ws “(“ expression “)”
…
Impact and interactions
Relevance to analytics
• Function-serving
– Most likely to be used/expected for use in ‘query’ field
of Query Specification Reference Set (TIG 5.5.2.9.)
• Competing, complementing, conflicting
– Local and National record query set specifications (QOF
[G30% etc.])
Candidate standard interchange format
for SNOMED CT-based
analysis(<< etc)
– Extended SNOMED CT Compositional
grammar
predicates
– Visual notation in IHTSDO
WB RefSet
Designed
to point designer
at reference data,
• Mistaken for
but near identical to parts of tests over
record data.
– Expression constraint formalism (e.g. LRA)
– Post-coordinated expression record query set
specification
Development stage
• 8.8 Public comment on Draft Standard and
consensus stage:
– 8.8.1 Based on the recommendation of the relevant
Committee(s), the Management Board will determine
when a Standard is ready for public comment as a
potential IHTSDO Standard. At this point, the official
status of the document changes to Draft IHTSDO
Standard. This status is intended to allow trialing of
prospective standards before adoption and this
trialing will have been reviewed by the Management
Board.
Development, Approval, Maintenance and Review of IHTSDO Technical Reports, Guidelines and Sta
Consultation approach
• “... The IHTSDO Management Board has approved this
specification as an IHTSDO draft standard for public
consultation over a period of six months. Please
forward all feedback on the specification to John Gutai
at jgu@ihtsdo. org by 14th June, using the feedback
sheet at:
https://csfe.aceworkspace.net/sf/docman/do/listDocu
ments/projects.
announcements/docman.root.ihtsdo_consultations.sct
_query_specifications ...”
Review and suitability testing
• UKTC intend to compare with QOF syntax
• Other familiar/useful formalisms?
• Other willing reviewers?