SNOMED CT is a standardised healthcare terminology including comprehensive coverage of diseases, clinical findings, therapies, procedures and outcomes. It provides the core general terminology for the electronic health record (EHR) and contains more than 357,000 concepts with unique meanings and formal logic-based definitions organised into hierarchies.

When implemented in software applications, SNOMED CT represents clinically-relevant information consistently, reliably and comprehensively as an integral part of producing electronic health records. SNOMED CT is considered to be the most comprehensive multilingual clinical healthcare terminology available in the world.

SNOMED International, a division of the College of American Pathologists, is committed to the excellence of patient care through the delivery of a dynamic and sustainable scientifically validated healthcare terminology and infrastructure that enables clinicians, researchers and patients to share health care knowledge worldwide, across clinical specialties and sites of care.
 

Significant progress has been made by key players to create an International Standards Development Organisation (SDO) to maintain and promote the SNOMED CT clinical terminology.

Representatives of five potential Charter Members of the SDO (Australia, Denmark, Lithuania, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) recently (October 2006) met with the College of American Pathologists (CAP) in Copenhagen to discuss the creation of the new organisation.

By the end of the two-day meeting, all the potential Charter Members (including Canada and the United States) and the College of American Pathologists agreed in principle to move forward together toward their common goal of founding the SNOMED Standards Development Organisation (SNOMED SDO).

During the course of the meeting, the participants identified significant areas of common ground and reached agreement in principle, subject to finalisation of contract, on the following:

• the terms for transfer of the intellectual property from the CAP to the SDO;

• the establishment of Denmark as the country of incorporation for the SDO as a not-for-profit Danish Society;

• the next steps for the creation of the legal entity that will become the SNOMED SDO;

• the SNOMED CT intellectual property rights that will be transferred from the CAP to the SNOMED SDO at the time of formal creation;

• the structure of the financial model for the new organisation;

• agreement of roles and activities for staff of the SDO;

• further agreement on the role of CAP as the initial Support Organisation for the SNOMED SDO;

• a process and timeline for moving forward to resolve the remaining questions, and to complete those tasks necessary for the formation of the SNOMED SDO.

The representatives agreed to the goal of completing the necessary details relating to the formation of the new SNOMED Standards Development Organisation by 31 December 2006. Leading clinicians have expressed their support for the progress that has been made towards this aim.

Dr Nick Booth, of the Joint GP IT committee of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the General Practice Committee of the British Medical Association said:

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In addition to being a participant in the development of the SNOMED SDO as stated above, the Australian Commonwealth and State governments, acting through the National eHealth Transition Authority (NEHTA), have purchased an interim licence for the use of SNOMED CT in Australia. This licence will be superseded by a licence with the SDO once that organisation is established.
 

FMRC is undertaking a work program to facilitate the use of SNOMED CT, in conjunction with ICPC-2, in Australian GP electronic health records and in secondary data coding systems. The program includes the following elements:

• Mapping ICPC-2 PLUS to SNOMED to form a first cut Australian GP subset. We wish to add emergency department and community health terms to give a “true” primary care sub-set (this proposal is being considered by the National eHealth Transition Authority (NEHTA));

• Using this map to provide an initial SNOMED to ICPC-2 map;

• Working with NEHTA to map the Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) to the World Health Organisation Anatomical, Therapeutic, Chemical (ATC) classification and establish a SNOMED drug code to ATC map.

The FMRC is also working at an international level with the Wonca International Classification Committee SNOMED Working Group and the SNOMED Primary Care Working Group to establish international standards for SNOMED use in primary care. Work elements include:

• Planning the SNOMED to ICPC-2 mapping process (at pilot planning stage);

• Developing a SNOMED Primary Care sub-set as an international standard (involving Argentina, Australia, Canada, UK and US);

• Planning rules for local subsets in different countries (these should be sub-sets of the international primary care sub-set).