Functional requirements of terminology services for coupling interface terminologies to reference terminologies.

Desiderata for interface terminologies (IT), designed to support interactions between humans and structured medical information, differ from desiderata for reference terminologies (RT). Terminology experts have recommended that IT be mapped to RT. The interface terminology of the Georges Pompidou European Hospital (GPEH-IT) contains more than 5,000 concepts, sometimes linked to ICD-10 but not yet to the SNOMED 3.5 VF, now available in France. Our objective was to use a formal characterization framework to compare GPEH-IT to SNOMED 3.5 VF and to define the functionalities of terminology services for managing both IT and RT and the mapping between them. We discuss the role of IT and RT in representing the meaning of clinical data.