An exploratory exercise in mapping approximately 8000 medication terms from the Queensland Health iPharmacy Medication File to the Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) was carried out to determine coverage, build specialist knowledge, and inform future clinical terminology strategies. Snapper was the mapping tool selected for this exercise. The Automap function of the tool mapped 39.2% of the items that were successfully mapped, and the remainder were manually mapped. A total of 51.8% of the sample items were mapped to a semantically equivalent AMT concept with 50.0% of terms being mapped to a satisfactory fully specified term, and 1.8% of terms being mapped to a fully specified term that was considered unsuitable for QH clinical purposes. Rules and guidelines on how to deal with the emerging differences between the two terminologies were developed during the course of the project. Snapper was found to be an appropriate tool for this exercise; its functionality is being constantly refined to assist users. As a result, this exercise will provide NEHTA with input for the national scope and content for AMT, and QH will endeavour to prepare the iPharmacy medication file for future interfaces with other terminologies.
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