Talk:Sharing Value Sets in Anatomic Pathology

I put here in the discussion a possible use case, that involves inter-specialty communication.

I'll go quickly through the facts involved in the possible use case:

- When a biopsy is taken under radiologist' guidance, the radiological report includes a coding for the radiologist observation. Depending whether the evidence comes from echography or radiology, codes are U1, U2, ... or R1, R2, ... (possibly other codings exist, I'm not sure: I'm waiting for radiologist' opinion). - the pathologist receives that codes together with patient data, - and produces his/her report. If the report is about mammary biopsy, he/she will then code his/her evaluation through a similar scale, defined into the "european guidelines for quality assurance in mammography screening". For biopsies, such scale ranges from B1 (normal) to B5 (malignant). For sake of simplicity, guidelines allow that some units may merge B3 (benign but of uncertain biological potential) and B4 (suspicious), as both indicate the need for further action.

The need for receiving value sets occurs at four levels: a) pathologist wants the radiologist coding when receives the sample; b) radiologist wants the pathologist coding when receives the histologic report; c) in exchange among pathology depts, there could be the need for exchanging the local value sets, because there is freedom in choosing whether to merge or not B3 and B4. d) usual versioning: third edition of guidelines is slightly different from fourth.

Similarly to biopsy coding, also cytology can be coded (C1...C5), although with different meanings.

another possibility

TNM and Bethesda values could bring the need of sharing them among information systems too. They are small coding systems, that, if not universally used, could be shared to enhance understanding of reports that include values from them.