This section provides an overview of:
- features
Exploring
- design and development
- components and
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- SNOMED CT characteristics
- SNOMED CT supporting different languages
- SNOMED CT products and services
Why is this important?
An awareness of
features,
, characteristics and products provides an initial foundation on which to build greater understanding. It also informs discussions leading to decisions about adoption, implementation and use of this terminology.
What is this?
SNOMED CT Features
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:
- Is the most comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology in the world.
- Is a resource with comprehensive, scientifically validated clinical content.
Enables consistent, processable representation of clinical content in
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- Is mapped to other international standards.
- Is already used in more than fifty eighty countries.
When implemented in software applications,
can be used to represent clinically relevant information consistently, reliably and comprehensively as an integral part of producing electronic health information.
Implementation requires an understanding of the way that
content content is represented by
Components and supported by Reference Sets and supported by | Gloss |
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(Refsets).
Exploring SNOMED CT
While reading the guide, you may find it useful to explore the content of
. You can do this using one of a range of online
listed on our web site at
http https://www.implementation.snomed.org/browsers. Note that the listed
browsers are are not endorsed by
IHTSDO and | Gloss |
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and they should only be used to a get feel for the content and structure of the terminology. It is useful to experiment with several different
browsers as as they vary in the way they present particular features of the terminology.
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SNOMED CT Design and Development
SNOMED CT Components
SNOMED CT is a core clinical healthcare terminology that contains
with unique meanings and formal logic based definitions organized into
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.
content content is represented using three types of
component::- representing Concepts representing
clinical meanings that are organized into hierarchies.
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which link appropriate human readable terms to concepts. to | Gloss |
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which Relationships which link each concept to other related
These components are supplemented by Reference Sets
are supplemented by | Gloss |
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, which provide additional flexible features and enable configuration of the terminology to address different requirements.
Concepts
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represent clinical thoughts, ranging from
|abscess
| to
|zygote
|. Every
concept has has a unique numeric
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. Within each
are organized from the general to the more detailed. This allows detailed clinical data to be recorded and later accessed or aggregated at a more general level.
Descriptions
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link appropriate human readable terms to
. A
concept can can have several associated
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, each representing a
synonym that that describes the same clinical concept. Each
translation of SNOMED CT includes | Gloss |
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of includes an additional set of
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, which link
terms in another language to the same in another to the same | Gloss |
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. Every
description has | Gloss |
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has a unique numeric
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Relationships
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link link concepts to other
concepts whose whose meaning is related in some way. These
relationships provide | Gloss |
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provide formal definitions and other properties of the
. One type of
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is the
|| relationship which relates a
to more general
. These |is a| relationships define the hierarchy of . These relationships define the of | Gloss |
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For example, the
|bacterial pneumonia| and |viral pneumonia| both have an |is a| relationship to |infective pneumonia| which has an |is a| relationship to the more general |pneumonia|.
Other types of relationships represent
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represent aspects of the meaning of a
For example, the
|viral pneumonia| has a |causative agent| relationship to the |virus| and a |finding site| | Gloss |
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to the |lung|.
Every relationship has
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has a unique numeric
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| t | identifier. |
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Reference sets
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(Refsets) are a flexible standard approach used by
to to support a variety of requirements for customization and enhancement of
. These include the representation of
, language preferences for use of particular
terms and mapping from and from or to other code systems. Every
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has has a unique numeric
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SNOMED CT Hierarchies
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are are organized in hierarchies. Within a
hierarchy, concepts range from the more general to the more detailed. Related
concepts in the hierarchy in the are linked using the
|is a
| relationship.
- Examples of some of the hierarchies include |clinical finding|, |procedure|, |observable entity|, |body structure| and |organism|.
SNOMED CT Characteristics - Comprehensive, Scalable and Flexible
has a broad coverage of health related topics. It can be used to describe a patient's medical history, the details of an orthopedic procedure, the spread of epidemics, and much more. At the same time, the terminology has an unmatched depth, which enables clinicians to record data at the appropriate level of granularity.
Specific applications tend to focus on a restricted set of
, such as
concepts related related to ophthalmology. These
subsets can can be used to present relevant parts of the terminology, depending on the clinical context and local requirements. This means for example, that a drop down list to select diagnoses in an
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in in a mental health facility can be tailored to that setting. Similarly,
subsets can can be defined for problem lists for physician specialties or to provide appropriate medication lists for nurses in community care.
When individual jurisdictions have needs beyond those that can be reflected in a global terminology, perhaps due to requirements in local legislation, they can develop local or national
. Thus, even though
is is global in scope, it can be adapted to each country's or areas requirements.
maps maps work to provide explicit links to health related classifications and coding schemes in use around the world, e.g.
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such as such as , and
. Maps to or from several national code systems are also available from, or under development, by
IHTSDO Members. Maps to or from clinical domain specific code systems are also maintained by specialty groups with which
IHTSDO has | Gloss |
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has collaborative agreement. Maps facilitate reuse of
based based clinical data for other purposes, such as reimbursement or statistical reporting.
Supporting Different Languages
is is a multinational, multilingual terminology. It has a built-in framework to manage different
languages and dialects. The International Release includes and . The | Gloss |
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includes a set of language independent
concepts and relationships. Today, SNOMED CT is available in US English, UK English, Spanish, Danish and Swedish. Partial translations into Canadian French, Lithuanian, and several other languages are currently taking place, and further language translations are being planned by IHTSDO Members. The basic objective of any SNOMED CT translation is to provide accurate representations of SNOMED CT concepts in and | Gloss |
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. Today, is available in many that can be viewed in the SNOMED International SNOMED CT Browser. The basic objective of any | Gloss |
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is to provide accurate representations of | Gloss |
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in a way that is understandable, usable, and safe.
Translations must be concept based| Gloss |
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must be based. Translators need to
analyses concepts analyse based on the
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and and take account of its position within the
, its
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, and its
relationships to other concepts| Gloss |
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to other . This enables a meaningful
translation of a concept based | Gloss |
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of a based on phrases that are well used and clearly understood in all countries.
The IHTSDO maintains | Gloss |
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maintains guidelines and other materials to support countries undertaking translations.
SNOMED CT Products and Services
and IHTSDO Members and organizations covered by the SNOMED CT
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have have access to a range of products and services, including:
...
- SNOMED CT terminology files consisting of:
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- works that help in the uptake and use of , including
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that that support:Identification of
of SNOMED CT content- Language or dialect preferences for use of particular or preferences for use of particular
- Maps to other code systems and classifications
Other relevant
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Implementation guidance for successful use of
including including:- Implementation guidance
- Translation guidance
- Editorial guidance for content development
- Access to services supporting submission of requests for changes or additions to content and documentation.
Participation in the global
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community through an electronic collaborative space and meeting of special interest groups.