Scientific article
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Bridging Gaps in Unified Clinical Terminology : The Necessity of Post-Coordination in SNOMED CT

Published inStudies in health technology and informatics, vol. 336, p. 1108-1112
Publication date2026-05-21
Abstract

We analyzed 23,595 SNOMED CT post-coordinated expressions from Geneva University Hospitals to evaluate their contribution to clinical coverage. Using a fine-tuned embedding model as a similarity measurement tool, we compared each post-coordination with concepts from 12 common terminologies, including SNOMED CT pre-coordinations. Nearly one quarter (24.3%) of post-coordinations aligned more closely with specialized terminologies such as LOINC and CPT, indicating that they capture information better represented elsewhere but not yet available in SNOMED CT. In addition, a substantial subset of post-coordinations showed low similarity to any existing vocabulary, reflecting highly specific institutional practices. These findings highlight post-coordination as essential for encoding fine-grained medical information within a unified terminology framework.

Keywords
  • SNOMED CT
  • UMLS
  • Electronic health records
  • Medical concept embeddings
  • Post-coordination
  • Semantic interoperability
  • Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine
  • Electronic Health Records
  • Humans
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Terminology as Topic
  • Unified Medical Language System
Citation (ISO format)
ZHENG, Yuanyuan et al. Bridging Gaps in Unified Clinical Terminology : The Necessity of Post-Coordination in SNOMED CT. In: Studies in health technology and informatics, 2026, vol. 336, p. 1108–1112. doi: 10.3233/SHTI260370
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Additional URL for this publicationhttps://ebooks.iospress.nl/doi/10.3233/SHTI260370
Journal ISSN0926-9630
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Technical informations

Creation01/06/2026 08:54:10
First validation01/07/2026 09:24:58
Update01/07/2026 09:24:58
Status update01/07/2026 09:24:58
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