What is the NHS Scotland Terminology Server?
The NHS Scotland Terminology Server is a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) compliant solution that gives access through API’s to assured international terminologies and classifications such as, but not limited to, SNOMED CT and ICD-10. The content available is governed through strict editorial controls.
The NHS Scotland Terminology Server is an established product and is a different instance of the same product that is used in NHS England where the server is used by clinical applications. Other countries across the world have their own instances. The server can contain additional content specific to use cases within NHS Scotland, such as mapping tables and subsets.
Our Vision
Our vision is to implement SNOMED CT across the health economy in Scotland with the Terminology Server being the single source and provider of the SNOMED CT content. It supports the strategic action …’ to roll SNOMED out across the NHS in Scotland’.
How it can be used
The Terminology Server provides functionality to support organisations developing their capability within digital systems in relation to SNOMED CT, as well as providing APIs to other terminology and classification content such as ICD-10.
The Terminology Server provides functionality such as:
- Access to updates: Updates to the latest release(s) of content, enabling organisations to align their own content from a single source.
- Smart data entry: for example of SNOMED terms through an intelligent browser enabling systems to support users entering terms in SNOMED in a live application.
- Subset creation: functionality that helps with the creation of subsets of content; in particular for SNOMED CT subsets the server supports writing a query to identify required terms.
- Mapping tables: the server has functionality to support mapping from local terms to national terms, as well as then hosting and providing live access to the final mapping table.
- Artefact maintenance: Functionality to support the maintenance of an organisation’s SNOMED CT subsets (e.g. by managing inactive content and identifying new concepts/descriptions).
- Analytics: providing functionality to support those writing queries, for example what are all the SNOMED CT concept Ids that are a descendant of a particular concept.
Who can use it
The NHS Scotland Terminology Server is available free of charge to any organisation providing services to the NHS in Scotland. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Providers of health and care services
- Commissioners of health and care services
- Population health managers
- Suppliers in the health and care market
- Researchers and analysts
Content included on the Terminology Server
- SNOMED CT – current release and a number of historical releases.
- Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) (20201207)
- ICD-10 – including historical versions (2017 – 2020)
- OPCS-4 – (4.8 and 4.9)
- READ codes (4 byte, V2 and CTV3) – including historical versions (2009 – 2018)
- UCUM (Unified Code for Units of Measure) (2.1)
- FHIR – including all published CodeSystems, ValueSets and ConceptMaps
- dm+d – including historical versions
How to get Access
Read Only Access
Users with an NHS Scotland email address, GitHub account or Google account are able to access the content on the Terminology server and can do so from here.
Other Access
If you do not have one of the above accounts, wish to have authoring access or you require access to the server from a software application, please contact the SNOMED CT Implementation team at nss.snomed@nhs.scot
Contact us
If you require any further information on the Terminology Server please contact the SNOMED CT Implementation team at nss.snomed@nhs.scot