Portuguese Catalogue for Allergies and Other Adverse Reactions
The World Allergy Organization (www.worldallergy.org) estimates that hypersensitivity diseases affects about 30 to 40% of the world population, wherein the severity and the complexity of this entities continues to increase exponentially. Overall, about 200 to 250 million people suffer from food allergies, over 400 million from rhinitis.1
In Portugal, it is estimated that over 2 million people present some kind of allergies, the reactions to them can go from mild to very serious medical conditions and even cause death. This clinical demonstrations can appear at any age.
Facing the globalization and the increase of people flow, arises the importance on the exchange and record of the clinical information of the individuals, and the need to standardize it.
The use of standard information allows that the produced data could be is used not only in an individual scale but also in a perspective of public an comunitary health.
The Portuguese Catalogue for Allergies and Adverse Reactions was elaborated on july 2012 (v1.0), and it is the first way of structured registration of these entities using electronic support. The Norm no 002/2012 from Portuguese Health General Directorate recommends that this data must be recorded by all health professionals across all National Health Service institutions.
The catalogue has suffered an update on december 2012 (v2.0), and this the current version being used in the NHS.
The allergies record is also available for each individual (NHS user) through the use of the web site Portal do Utente.
In 2015 the Ministry of Health Shared Services, intended as necessary a new update to the existing catalogue, in order to follow the evolution in this knowledge field and looking ahead to the crossboarder exchange of data.
In this context, is under development the catalogue v3.0, which aims to:
- Revision of existing content, in order to include pertinent content, not contemplated untill now;
- Creation of standard and codified language for the Allergies and Other Adverse Reactions;
- SNOMED CT (international classification) adoption.
This project has contributions from many institutions, and was available for public consultation until the 22nd of april 2015.
During the project execution, visits to the field are being made with the aim of understanding how the last versions are implemented in the different information systems, and to listen the health professionals opinions.
1Pawankar, R. The unmet global health need of severe and complex allergies: meeting the challenge. WAO journal 2012, 5:20-21
