Le Centre de Gestion des Terminologies de Santé a donc pour mission de se charger de cette maîtrise d’ouvrage opérationnelle des ressources sémantiques, mais aussi du guichet national de publication, ainsi que de l’accompagnement des utilisateurs. En France, le CGTS regroupe à date au sein de son catalogue 34 Terminologies couvrant un grand nombre de domaines médicaux.

A terminology is an ensemble of concepts defined by terms which belong to a specific language set. 

Terminologies are defined through a research process aimed at finding the most relevant terms used by a specific profession (or a field of expertise) in a particular context of use. 

Centralising and monitoring this vocabulary is essential to maintain a coherent use of the terms amongst eHealth experts and healthcare professionals.

The digital transition in France involves much more health data transfers. It is essential to set up a common language in this ecosystem, which currently lacks homogeneity at a local and international scale. The CGTS was created by the State to centralise the semantic resources for health professionals.

There are several levels of requirements for a module’s integration into the Hospital Information System. 

The main requirements set out by the referential are: 

• Interfacing, control, security guidelines; 
• Prescription process requirements; 
• National prescription thesaurus integration requirements; 
• Requirements regarding medico-economic and decision processes; 
• Guidelines for ergonomics, functions, and notification alerts; 
• Settings function requirements. 

In total, 139 requirements are used to reach the minimal level of security needed for a solution’s integration into the hospital information system.

The current referential (2017) was written with industry experts. It introduces the particular context of this mission and the goals to reach in order to improve safety measures in neonatology and paediatric reanimation. The referential walks you through the fundamental concepts you need to grasp to understand the several requirements and protocols involved with software development for this sector.

Neonatology is a high-risk practice for two main reasons:

• The patients are extremely fragile (premature babies) 
• 50% of the drugs used in the sector have yet to receive a marketing authorisation.

A survey conducted in 2014 evidenced a risk in the prescription process across the sector. The digitalisation of prescription is among the 41 recommendations that the report issued in order to increase safety levels.