That’s not a string… This, is a string! (Annotation reference sets)

By | January 7, 2014

Yesterday I was explaining to a colleague that reference sets can be used to do all sorts of interesting things other than just describe basic subsets of content, when I realised an option I’d not considered before…

The SNOMED CT RF2 specification details a core structure of 6 fields (the simple refset pattern) and from my experience this is what most people tend to have in mind when talking about refsets. However, the specification is extendible and allows for any combination of Integer, String or an Component ID fields to be added on for further patterns. What this allows is all sorts of extensions to be created, shared and used.

One idea I’ve always liked is annotating components something like a link to a reference article or an image. As an example :

referencedComponentId
Annotation
127913001
127916009

And this pattern too, is also described in the specification. So I mentioned annotations with images (like above) as an example of something different you could do, and as I say it I remember Base64 encoding. Obviously size is the main consideration, with the URL annotation above being just 65 bytes compared to the 7,400 of the encoded target image (which itself is 5.3Kb). And though I’ve got limited experience with Base64, decoding performance doesn’t seem too bad.

So while there is a significant hit on refset size, I can imagine applications that might benefit from this, particularly where offline use is a consideration or maintenance/reliability of online targets is a concern (Link rot).

And if you’re curious – here’s what the first entry of the above refset might look like:

referencedComponentId
Annotation
127913001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wNUQ4EnfgFwG7fX616NFF9vrronaXAHwjDxDgw0lZ1FHS8wRUs7B4nadAzDbALjrHq9JM0tQYF2q
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prGowbVezN9I7x0i7rUPFLNVgOFsIIReqPpelQrMUr3I+7P2KuOsze/IjqmN/7o0JaRyx8x41yF7
JtLxBYMyfV6vyzzUGenV/dkIsZHEOrq3jKrmUNI4Z+8TW64pzAw7h9mKLYA934tZ7mfYMLi0+/cH
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RK5CYII=

Now that’s a knife string!

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