Summary
A reference set (refset) is format for mantaining and distributing a set of references to SNOMED CT components that may associate additional properties with components that are members of the set and/or which may indicate associations between members of the set or between members of the set and content of another nomenclature, classification or knowledge structure (See IHTSDO's SNOMED CT Technical Implementation Guide).
Refsets are a standard way to represent additional non-defining information about members of a set of components and are important as they can be used in SNOMED CT enabled applications to constrain, configure and enhance functionality to match requirements for different use cases. Some examples of the many uses of reference sets may include the following:
- To represent language and dialect preferences for use of particular terms to describe a concept, allowing to configure preferred and acceptable descriptions for a language, dialect or context of use.
- To include or exclude subsets of components from the set of values that can be used by a particular country, organization or context.
- To prioritize frequently used descriptions or concepts for searches in a particular country, organization or context.
- For structuring and ordering lists and hierarchies
- Supporting maps from or to other code systems
- To represent value sets of concepts limiting the permitted content of a field in line with requirements of standard message or communication interface
Authored refsets in termSpace
Authored refsets are draft refsets created by a user, not intended to be published in the short-term but fulfill all the requirements for working in a development setting.
Authored refsets may be classified as:
- Simple type refsets: consist in lists of concepts which only contain terms and associated concept IDs
- Simple map reference sets: allow representation of simple maps between SNOMED CT concepts and values in other code systems
- Attribute-value reference sets
- Ordered references sets: authored refsets that are ordered in supertype-subtype relationships
Important Clarification
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