More topics

Medical Imaging Terminology Value Set

Last updated on August 13, 2019

The Ministry of Health (“the Ministry”) and health authorities jointly developed a Medical Imaging Database (MID) to capture, analyze, and report data collected by the health authorities during the provision of publicly-funded medical imaging services. Prior to the development of the MID, there was no established provincial standard for medical imaging procedure codes and nomenclature (i.e. exam names). Health authorities were using their own exam dictionaries that may not have been consistent with exam dictionaries in other health authorities. Disparate systems, processes, codes, and nomenclature hinders the consistency, timeliness, accuracy, and reliability of reporting on medical imaging activities (i.e. exam volumes and wait times) to the Ministry. Sharing this information enables the Ministry and the health authorities to receive timely, accurate, and comprehensive data for all medical imaging modalities, which in turn allows for opportunities to provide an array of analyses and improvements to various aspects of the healthcare system.

Scope

The scope of this user reference is to build an understanding of the various procedure codes, as well as the exam names available in the B.C. Medical Imaging Terminology reference set that will facilitate future mapping to SNOMED terms. 

Governance

A Medical Imaging Data Working Group (MIDWG) meets monthly to discuss developments in the terminology or dataset and endorse any necessary updates to the reference set. The MIDWG is led by staff from the Health Sector Information, Analysis and Reporting Division of the Ministry and has representatives from each health authority. The MIDWG reports to the Medical Imaging Data Standing Committee (MIDSC).  

Current Status

Version 1.0 of the standard was published in June 2019 and is available for download (see links below).

Maintenance

Significant analysis and review of documents and specifications were undertaken to ensure that the standards developed would be applicable and attainable to the various stakeholder groups.

Wherever possible, content templates defined and reviewed by standards bodies were referenced, and appropriate constraints for the B.C. context applied.

The content of the standard may require post-production edits, additions and/or maintenance to address issues identified by technical validation. Additional adjustments may be required over time to reflect requirements in B.C. or to align with emerging pan-Canadian standards developments.  

Download

  1. Download the B.C. Medical Imaging Terminology User Reference Guide (PDF, 268 KB).

  2. Download the B.C. Medical Imaging Terminology Master Exam Code Mapping (Excel, 929 KB).

  3. Download the B.C. Medical Imaging Terminology SNOMED Mapping (Excel, 170 KB).

The MI Terminology Value Set is considered stable and in use provincially within the health authorities. However, the accompanying SNOMED mapping is provided for implementer assistance and likely needs additional clinical review and validation before being considered to be stable for use in production.

 

Last updated: August 2019