Adding/Removing a Concept

Owned by Brian Carlsen
Last updated: Mar 07, 2020
4 min read

User guide on adding or removing a concept.

Editing features are only available for terminologies that have been configured to support it and when logged in as a user with a “USER” or “ADMIN” role. The WCI Terminology Server supports only simple concept editing in the form of adding local concepts as children of existing concepts.

 

Adding a Concept

Concepts can be added as “child concepts” of existing concepts already in the terminology. This is done by clicking the “Add Child Concept” button for concepts that have been searched for and loaded into the display. See Terminology Browsing for more information on searching. For example, consider the case of adding application of a new type of device as a SNOMEDCT_US procedure.

Clicking the “Add Child Concept” button causes the dialog to open:

There are five fields here, some of which can be edited and others not.

  • Semantic Types - borrowed from the parent concept, these cannot be edited.

  • Terminology - matching the parent concept, this cannot be edited.

  • Code - whether this is editable or not depends on the terminology configuration. There are currently three modes available (and the strategy must be chosen in advance):

    • Manually add a code

    • Use a basic “max id” assignment strategy (starting with a certain number, say 1000, the next sequential number is assigned to the new concept). This mode also supports an optional alphanumeric prefix.

    • Use a “SNOMED” assignment strategy (starting with a certain number, say 1000, the next sequential number is assigned along with a predefined namespace id and the full SNOMED id assignment algorithm is used with a 10 partition id and properly computed verhoeff check digit).

  • Preferred Name - required field and will become the preferred name of the new concept

  • Synonyms - optional field where one synonym per line can also be added.

Clicking the “Add Child Concept” button causes the concept to be added and then loaded into the display.

Important side-effects:

  • Parent/child relationships are created connecting the concept to its parent concept

  • ECL indexes are updated so they will now properly resolve this concept.

NOTE: this is a very simple mechanism for adding concepts. It is intended for light local extensions to existing terminologies. Full relationship modeling is not supported, changing of semantic types or addition of other relationships is not supported, moving the concept from this tree position to another is not supported, attaching an additional parent is not supported.

NOTE: there is currently no collection of validation rules around the creation of concepts. It is possible to create multiple concepts with the same preferred name (though not the same code). Future editions of the tool will support more features in this area.

Deactivating a Concept

Only concepts that have been created by the process described above can be deactivated and must first be searched for and loaded into the concept report display. See Terminology Browsing for more information on searching.

A concept is deactivated by clicking on the “X” icon next to the preferred name in the header at the top of the concept report.

Clicking this icon opens a confirmation dialog, which if approved, deactivates the concept and reloads the page displaying the concept in a deactivated state (grayed out).

 

Reactivating a Concept

Only concepts that have been created and then deactivated by the processes described above can be activated and must first be searched for and loaded into the concept report display. See Terminology Browsing for more information on searching..

A concept is activated by clicking on the “check mark” icon next to the preferred name in the header at the top of the concept report.

Clicking this icon opens a confirmation dialog, which if approved, activates the concept and reloads the page displaying the concept (no longer grayed out).

 

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