Snoflake is an online SNOMED CT Browser, with support for SNOMED RT and CTV3 codes. The Snoflake Browser uses a variety of techniques to find, sort and retrieve codes, including a multi parent/child relationship viewer, to make it easier to traverse SNOMED CT relationships.
The Log in and Registration page is the first you will see when you visit Snoflake
As a first-time user of Snoflake, you will be required to register. This is done by completing and submitting the registration form (on the right) which is minimal and takes a very short time.
When you submit your registration details, an email containing your login credentials will be sent to you immediately, and you will now be able to access the Snoflake browser whenever you wish!
The Home (opening) screen
The screen displays two frames:
| Left | This contains the Snoflake Search mechanism which enables a user to locate a required concept. This aspect of the browser will be dealt with later in this document, as will the explanations for the 3 tabs. |
Right |
Displays the Root concept (in the centre, formatted in Bold text) and its first level child concepts, the relationships between the parent and its children being represented by the light grey lines. When you open Snoflake you will see, as illustrated above, that the default root is the SNOMED CT Concept and its child concepts are the various concept types – for example, Procedure, Clinical finding, Organism, etc. |
Note: In some cases the SNOMED Parent can have a large number of child relationships and for clarity the number of these displayed is controlled by the application. If there are more children a clickable Next button is displayed in the bottom RH corner of the frame. If this is clicked the user is taken to the next page of relationships where another Next button is displayed if more child options are available, and a Previous button provided to return the user to the previous view.
Navigation
The RH frame provides a useful navigation tool. If any of the child concept labels is clicked, the screen redraws to display that concept’s mapping with the Parent concept becoming the root and being displayed in Bold white text, with a blue background. In addition to its own child concepts, the Root concept’s parent/s is/are displayed in Red text.
For example, if the Procedures (procedure) concept displayed in the top right hand side of the screen is clicked the following screen is displayed.
It can be seen that the selected (or Root) concept is again displayed in Bold text centre screen and its Parent concept (only one in this case) displayed in red text. Around the Root concept some of= its own child concepts – in this case procedure classifications - are displayed.
Note: It is obvious that the full list of known procedures would not be readable if displayed on a single page, and Snoflake caters for this by displaying just 20 at a time. Click the button at the bottom right hand corner of the page and the next 20 procedures will be displayed.
By clicking on any of these concepts – parent or child – you can navigate through the SNOMED CT system.
Finding a Snomed CT Concept
Returning to the left hand frame of the screen, you will find the Keyword Search mechanism.
If the term larynx, for example, is typed into the Keywords field and the Search button clicked, a list of concepts containing the term larynx is displayed as illustrated below:
Note: Multiple keywords can be entered to reduce the result set and the number of items listed will depend upon the return number selected.
As part of the updates in v3.5 there are now several more filter and search options available to you.
- Suffix - Selecting a Suffix from the dropdown list – for example, procedure or finding – will reduce the number of records displayed in the result set by that particular suffix.
- Show UK Extensions - By ticking the check box for Show UK Extensions you are incuding the UK Concept extension of Snomed CT codes in your search results.
- Prefix Search - Ticking the check box for Prefix Search enables prefix searching within the keyword search field. This allows the user to search single or multiple words in a shorter and more efficient time frame than before. For example if I was looking for the Concept ID to 'Larynx Manipulation', instead of typing out the full description I would simply type 'lar' and 'man' (minimum of the first 3 characters). The prefix saerching algorithm returns all concepts containing 'lar' and/or 'man' with a weighting so the top search results are those that match my search criteria the closest.
- Subset - Selecting a Subset filters your result string to those concepts only found within that subset.
- Favourites - The favourites drop down allows you to filter search results by your own library of pre selected concepts. This will be covered in more detail further on in the documentation.
From this result set a Concept ID – the numbers and Concept on the left hand side – can be selected.
The weighting bar at the RHS of each item indicates the fit of the submitted description with that of the particular concept.
For this example the concept selected is 33924006 - Abscess of larynx (disorder).
As a result the upper part of the right hand frame displays as above, showing (in order working down the page):
- The full concept description, and its status (current in this case)
- The concept ID (number)
- The equivalent legacy codes for both SNOMED RT & CTV3
- The descriptive terms used to describe the concept - in this example there are just two.
The term types are signified by:
P = Preferred term, S = Synonym, H = Homonym, F = Fully specified and U = Unspecified
In this particular case the Preferred & Full types are indicated to be in use.
Note. Each Term used as a Concept description has its own SNOMED CT code as shown in the screenshot above and in fact every entity within the SNOMED CT thesaurus has a code.
To view a Concept in the Snoflake – Move the cursor over any of your search results and the Concept ID and Description will highlight orange.
If clicked, the selected concept is displayed in the right hand frame as shown below.
Note: The Concept is in bold font and it can be seen that it has 3 Child and 3 Parent concepts
Clicking on the Abscess of neck (disorder) parent node takes the user one step up the polyhierarchy so that this particular concept is displayed with its own relationships – 3 parents and 9 Children - as shown below:
Favourite Concepts – Creation & Management
Users can create a library system where their most used concepts can be stored and maintained for quick and easy access.
If we return to the search and selection stage as described earlier and illustrated again here, the right-hand 
button box can be clicked to save the displayed concept in a Favourites folder.
Clicking on the button changes the highlighted frame as below.
Clicking the 
Add hyperlink will save this concept in the selected folder.
Note. A new user will be automatically provided with a Folder #1.
To edit your favourites select the Account & Favourites tab and select your required favourites folder from the top bar. The screen below is displayed in the right-hand frame:
This screen can be used to create and manage a folder system for your favourites.
To remove an entry first tick the tick-box adjacent to the Concept ID and then click the Delete Selected button. This will remove multiple ticked items.
Listening to user feedback we have now implemented a download function which allows you the user to download your entire favourite folder in csv format. Simply select the folder you wish to download from the list of folder names at the top of the right hand frame and click the 
button.
Your Account Details Management
You can edit your details by clicking on the Account & Favourites tab on the main menu.
Details available to edit include the following:
Name
Organisation
Email
Phone
Country
You may edit and save (Just click the Save button) any of these, however you will NOT be able to edit your password for security reasons. If you need to amend your password, please contact us on snoflake@dataline.co.uk quoting your username.
snAPI
SnAPI If you are interested in using SnAPI then your unique GUID is provided for you in the Your Details section, as well as a link for downloading snAPI
