MBS - Australian billing codes vocabulary

Vocabulary Users
1

I have successfully parsed the Australian MBS (medicare benefits scheme - http://www.mbsonline.gov.au) xml file (Nov 2020 version) and imported as custom concepts, including parsing groups, subgroups and categories and enforcing ‘is-a’ and ‘subsumes’ relationships.

Wondering if this would be sufficiently useful to other groups that folks would be keen to see it imported as an OMOP vocabulary? Happy to provide the custom concepts that I’ve created if there’s value in this.

Unfortunately the xml from the MBS website doesn’t have sufficient detail to capture group and subgroup concepts automatically so I had to pull them from the pdf (only mentioning this for maintainability’s sake).

5 Likes
2

@gkenno Yes, it can be really useful! Could you let us take a look at the work you have done (e.g. via creating the issue here) please?

Tagging our experts: @Christian_Reich @mik

3

Sure thing - what would you like to see attached to the issue? The csv files with the concepts themselves? or just details of what has been done?

4

(seeking permission from the copyright holder in the mean time)

5

Hi @gkenno. Thank you for posting this and doing all that work! I’m a researcher at UniSA and wondering whether I could get a copy of the CSV files you created? (how you did it would be awesome too). We have done mapping of PBS codes so it would be great to share notes if possible, and the PBS mappings to RxNorm Extension might be of use to you. In any case the PBS mappings will be made available by the OHDSI Australia chapter soon for anyone reading this in the future (we also encourage people to join the mailing list :slight_smile:). I’ll direct message you my email address if that is OK to talk that way.

6

@gkenno The csv file is good enough, however, any additional information also can be useful. Thank you in advance :slight_smile:

7

Sure thing - I will email now.

8

These, please. What’s been done would also help for the maintenance, but first we need to figure out the content.

What’s that? Want to share as well, so we can bring it in for other users of Australian data?

9

Sure thing @Christian_Reich - very happy to share these, but just waiting to hear from the copyright holder that they are happy for us to do this. @tystan and I have met offline and compared notes, which was productive, and his group has a contact within the necessary office to follow this up and hopefully get the permission to share (there’s just a bit of an unclear statement on the website about secondary uses, so don’t want to fall foul of that)

PBS is the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme, so has the Australian labels for drugs. PBS has mappings to existing OHDSI vocabs thanks to @tystan and others, but MBS mappings would be more of an exercise.

10

When you talk to them: They are usually worried that somebody might use the codes in an EHR system without paying for a license. Tell them that we are not doing patient care at all, only population research. And that we are not using the code other than for mapping to another representation.

2 Likes