Portuguese Catalogue for Nutrition

The importance given to the nutrition field has grown in relevance since  its preponderant role was assumed,  in the combat and prevention of a big part of the diseases considered as flagella now-a-days: cardiovascular disease, oncological disease, obesity, among others.

Within this scope arose the necessity to also include this field the Health IT context, being created a module for nutrition records integrated in IT health platform by a partnership between the Ministry of Health Shared Services and the Nutritionists Office.

The developed platform allows a practical and standard record of clinical data obtained during the nutrition appointment and also the multidisciplinary exchange of this information.

However, besides the advances already achieved through the implementation of this platform, the language used on the records is not standard. The adoption of a standard clinical terminology is a requisite for the continuous optimization of the care provided in this field.

In this context, arises this project, a partnership between the semantic interoperability from the Ministry of Health Shared Services and the Nutrition Office, that aims the creation of a set of terms to build a nomenclature table for Nutrition practice - a Nutrition Reference Set. 

The main goal is to promote the adoption of this catalogue by all the nutrition professionals. This catalogue will be created using the international Standard: SNOMED CT, in order to guarantee a consistent exchange of data across national territory and cross borders.