A framework for mapping Thai drugs using a pharmaceutical ontology extension of Snomed CT

This paper presents the design of ontology-based knowledge representation for pharmaceutical products. Managing different drug-coding systems for the local Thai drugs is a challenge. Thus, in order to easily and efficiently manage the pharmaceutical product in Thailand, we propose the use of existing systematized nomenclature of medicine, clinical terms (Snomed CT) in conjunction with our proposed pharmaceutical Thai medicine ontology (O_TM). Moreover, we implement a drug semi-automatic mapping system that measures similarity between definitions in the ontology and local drugs. Which is then used to recommend for mappings to Snomed CT. An evaluation by means of user satisfaction was proved the framework to be useful.