Next generation terminology infrastructure to support interprofessional care planning.

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Terminology
• Interprofessional Care

Background:

• Patient-centered care planning requires robust information infrastructure.
• Current systems lack standardized models for interprofessional care plan linkages and decision support.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a prototype infrastructure for interprofessional terminology and information models.
• To enable care planning applications for patient-centered care, decision support, and analytics.

Main Methods:

• A three-step approach: process model and clinical scenario development, requirements analysis, and information/terminology model development and validation.
• Mapping requirements to the AHRQ Care Coordination Measures Framework.

Main Results:

• Components of the terminology model include Health Concerns, Goals, Decisions, Interventions, Assessments, and Evaluations.
• Key requirements for terminology infrastructure include discrete concepts, profession-specific sets, rationale communication, semantic linkages, shared goals, and evaluation capture.
• The proposed infrastructure requirements align with the AHRQ Care Coordination Measures Framework.

Conclusions:

• Defining and linking care planning concepts is feasible and essential for modeling interprofessional care.
• Gaps in SNOMED CT for goal and decision models limit current evaluation.
• Recommendations include creating goal dynamics and decision concepts in SNOMED CT to enhance intelligent decision support and reduce clinician burden.