SNOMED CT Terminology Bridge¶

SNOMED CT is licensed terminology and is not bundled with OpenMed. Use SNOMEDTerminologyBridge only with a FHIR terminology endpoint or Snowstorm FHIR interface that your organization operates and is licensed to use.

The bridge is deliberately out of process. It does not download, persist, or cache SNOMED content. A text lookup sends only the supplied span as the FHIR CodeSystem filter parameter. An SCTID lookup sends only the supplied code to CodeSystem/$lookup, along with the required SNOMED system URI. No note, patient, assertion, or surrounding context is added to either request.

from openmed.interop.bridges import SNOMEDTerminologyBridge

bridge = SNOMEDTerminologyBridge(
    endpoint="https://terminology.example/fhir",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer <caller-managed-token>"},
)

matches = bridge.lookup("synthetic finding alpha", limit=5)
for match in matches:
    print(match.code, match.display, match.score)

The result is a tuple of the same ConceptMatch records used by the shared free-vocabulary matcher. An empty tuple is an ordinary terminology abstention. Missing endpoint configuration raises SNOMEDTerminologyConfigurationError; the bridge never silently falls back to bundled or local SNOMED data.

For a local server that does not require authentication, omit headers. For server-specific authentication, use explicit caller-managed headers or the bearer_token, api_key, or basic-auth options. Credentials remain in memory for the bridge lifetime and are excluded from configuration representations. The terminology server remains responsible for access control, licensing, and its own audit/logging policy.

Grounding output is assistive and requires qualified review. It must not be used as an autonomous diagnosis, treatment, billing, or clinical decision.