SNOMED CT-based sensitivity now on Multilex DDF

Clinical decision support specialist, First DataBank Europe (FDBE), has announced the release of SNOMED CT-based sensitivity checking within its drug knowledge base, the Multilex Drug Data File (Multilex DDF).

The release follows on from a development last year when FDBE released functionality to support SNOMED CT and dm+d based sensitivity checking to comply with NHS Connecting for Health guidance on the use of SNOMED CT for representing patient allergies within clinical applications and the National Care Records Service.

The content to support the use of this functionality in live systems is now available. This means that drug sensitivities and allergies recorded using dm+d products and, from this week, SNOMED CT substance codes can be used to drive a sensitivity check within Multilex DDF.

FDBE says its clinical decision support runs several active checks, including a sensitivity check, against a patient profile to determine whether medications are suitable for use and provides an alert message when appropriate. The sensitivity check determines whether a medication is related by base ingredient, ingredient group or cross reactor group to a recorded patient sensitivity or allergy.

Historically, a wide variety of coding systems have been used to represent allergies and FDBE has welcomed the use of standardisation within this critical area of patient specific clinical checks.

The company is also releasing a subset of SNOMED CT codes suitable for presenting in a picking list to support the recording of patient medication sensitivities and allergies. The subset will enable FDBE customers to implement this functionality more effectively in order to become SNOMED CT compliant.

Keith Kirtland, sales and marketing director at FDBE, commented: “We are proud to be at the forefront of developments to enable our customers to meet NHS Connecting for Health requirements for recording allergies. This significant development to our expanding profile of decision support functionality is further evidence of FDBE supporting the use of standard terminologies.”