Questions

• What terminologies/classifications are being utilized in clinical health care settings?
• What is the basis for the decision to choose each of the terminologies?
• When did SNOMED CT come into use?

2.1 What terminologies/classifications are being utilized in clinical health care settings? 

The terminologies and classifications being utilized varies from country to country. Here are some examples:

2.2 What is the basis for the decision to choose each of the terminologies? 

The reasons to choose a specific terminology for each clinical healthcare setting will vary from Member to Member. The following factors may be considered:

• The clinical scope and degree of fit-for-purpose.
• The ability to use the codes to support a range of use cases, such as data sharing between providers, data analytics for clinical decision making, clinical research, population health management, statistical reporting and reimbursement purposes.
• Existing or future national standards or legislation.
• Support for national infrastructure projects, such as national health records, cross-sector data interoperability, clinical registries, or reporting.

2.3 When did SNOMED CT come into use?

SNOMED CT was created in 1999 by the merging or SNOMED RT (developed by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and the Clinical Terms Version 3 (CTV3/Read codes). In 2003, SNOMED CT was made available for use in the United States through the National Library of Medicine (NLM). And in 2007, SNOMED CT was transferred from the CAP to the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO). Since then, SNOMED CT has been implemented in over 80 countries. National SNOMED CT extensions are available in many member countries including Spain, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, US and Uruguay. In 2017 IHTSDO adopted the trading name SNOMED International.