SNOMED CT, NHS Standards discussion on E-Health Insider

Will be interested to see what response there is to Tim Benson's comment on the ever-expanding thread in response to eHeatlth Insider's article

This is Tim's comment in full:

"The point about SNOMED is that it does not possess the fatal flaws of the alternatives. Simple hierarchical systems such as Read Codes V2 and ICD10 simply lack key features that are needed in any modern coding scheme. Back in 1997 Jim Cimino published a set of "Desiderata", which can be summarised as:
(1) Comprehensive content
(2) One and only one meaning for each concept (concept orientation)
(3) Permanence - medical records last a long time
(4) Meaningless unique identifiers - position-specific coding schemes cannot evolve
(5) Polyhierarchy - many concepts have multiple parents. A broken femur is a fracture and an injury to the femur
(6) Formal computable definitions so we can express the same thing in different ways but know it is the same thing
(7) No "NEC". Not elsewhere classified terms may change their meaning with each release.
(8) Multiple granularity and levels of detail
(9) Multiple consistent views
(10) Explicit representation of context
(11) Graceful evolution
(12) Recognise redundancy
SNOMED CT scores 12/12 on this list. I would agree with those who say that we need to use good design to make systems that use SNOMED a pleasure to use."