Introduction
The Generic Canadian Editorial Guidelines outline editorial policies regarding the purpose, scope, boundaries, requirements, Concept Model, hierarchies, terming, and others for SNOMED CT. These are primarily intended to guide those who are responsible for editing SNOMED CT content and for those creating extensions. They also provide stakeholders with editorial criteria for making successful request for change (RFC) submissions for content additions or changes in either the Canadian or the International Edition of SNOMED CT.
These documents provide the latest decisions for the different use cases encountered to date, and serve as the baseline to the other domain-specific guidelines. It should be noted that guidelines are working documents which continue to evolve over time as medicine and health sciences evolve, and as new use cases arise and are accommodated within the terminology. Stakeholders are encouraged to consult these pages regularly as Infoway will update them as required and will republish them periodically.
Infoway has based these Generic Canadian Editorial Guidelines on the SNOMED International SNOMED CT Editorial Guide. A French Editorial Guideline titled Guide des règles éditoriales et terminologiques - Développement de contenu SNOMED CT en français is also available to French speaking stakeholders. These guidelines cover the common and frequent set of rules that apply to most terminology content, and must be followed when submitting RFCs to Infoway through the Infoway Request Management System (InfoRMS).
When creating new content, it is important to follow rules to assure consistency and quality. Infoway has developed several domain-specific guidelines that augment the SNOMED International rules, avoid ambiguity and reflect Canadian requirements. These include:
- SNOMED CT Content Development Canadian Editorial Guidelines for Microbiology
- SNOMED CT Content Development Canadian Editorial Guidelines for Immunization
- SNOMED CT Content Development Canadian Editorial Guidelines for Clinical Imaging Procedure
However, it is recommended that the Generic Canadian Editorial Guidelines be reviewed first for the following reasons:
- This document explains what the concepts include and what the intent of use is of the different descriptions namely the Fully Specified Name a (FSN) and the Preferred Synonym (PS)
- This document includes a QA Checklist which provides requestors with a summary of the most important criteria to validate prior to submitting your RFC to Infoway
Reference to one or more of the above domain-specific guides should then be undertaken.
General Considerations
The Generic Canadian Editorial Guidelines apply to requests for new concepts and descriptions, and requests for modification for SNOMED CT.
Where Canadian requirements are the same as SNOMED International, the baseline reference is SNOMED International SNOMED CT Editorial Guide. Where more specificity is required, it has been added into this document or included in the domain-specific guide.