Introduction
Snow Owl® is a highly scalable terminology server with revision-control capabilities and collaborative authoring platform features. It allows you to store, search, and author high volumes of terminology artifacts quickly and efficiently.
Example use cases
You work in the healthcare industry and are interested in using a terminology server for browsing, accessing, and distributing components of various terminologies and classifications to third-party consumers. In this case, you can use Snow Owl to load the necessary terminologies and access them via FHIR and proprietary APIs.
You are responsible for maintaining and publishing new versions of a particular terminology. In this case, you can use Snow Owl to access collaboratively and author the terminology content and at the end of your release schedule publish it with confidence and zero errors.
You have an Electronic Health Record system and would like to capture, maintain, and query clinical information in a structured and standardized manner. Your Snow Owl terminology server can integrate with your EHR server via standard APIs to provide the necessary access for both terminology binding and data processing and analytics.
Generic core functionality and SNOMED CT tooling are open-source, all other features require a license.
Features
Revision-controlled authoring and distribution
Maintains multiple versions (including unpublished and published) for each terminology artifact and provides APIs to access them all
Independent work branches offer work-in-progress isolation, external business workflow integration, and team collaboration
SNOMED CT and others
SNOMED CT terminology support
RF2 Release File Specification as of 2024-05-01
Support for Relationships with concrete values
Official and Custom Reference Sets
With its modular design, the server can maintain multiple terminologies (including local codes, mapping sets, and value sets)
Various sets of APIs
Dedicated SNOMED CT, ATC, ICD-10, LOINC, Local Code System, Value Set, and Concept Map APIs
Highly extensible and configurable
Simple to use plug-in system makes it easy to develop and add new terminology tooling/API or any other functionality
Full-text search and data storage
Connect to your existing cluster or use the embedded instance (supports up to Elasticsearch 8.x)
All the power of Elasticsearch is available (monitoring, analytics, and many more)
Acknowledgments
Numerous other organizations have directly or indirectly contributed to Snow Owl, including:
Singapore Ministry of Health
American Dental Association
University of Nebraska Medical Center (USA)
Federal Public Service of Public Health (Belgium)
Danish Health Data Authority
Health and Welfare Information Systems Centre (Estonia)
Department of Health (Ireland)
New Zealand Ministry of Health
Norwegian Directorate of eHealth
Integrated Health Information Systems (Singapore)
National Board of Health and Welfare (Sweden)
eHealth Suisse (Switzerland)
National Library of Medicine (USA)
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