Enrichment of SNOMED CT Ophthalmology Component to Support EHR Coding

The US government has offered major financial incentives to encourage MDs, including ophthalmologists, to adopt Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in their practices. SNOMED CT was designated to be the EHR clinical terminology of choice. However, ophthalmologists in the US do not use SNOMED CT coding in their EHRs in spite of the Convergent Ophthalmology Terminology project by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, which added about 9,000 ophthalmology concepts to SNOMED CT. Hence, the intended interoperability and meaningful use have not been achieved. We examine the various reasons causing this lack of adoption of SNOMED CT, and we address how to enrich the ophthalmology component (OC) of SNOMED CT to create an interface terminology that better supports the EHR coding needs of ophthalmologists. Our proposed enhancements take into consideration the systematic workflow of eye patient visits, enriching the modeling of OC by adding extra part\_of relationships that accelerate access to necessary concepts.