Systematized Nomenclature Of Medicine-Clinical Terminology
The Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) started life as the creation of the American College of Pathology as Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology (SNOP) in 1965. 1 in 1977 the American College of Pathology and large to SNOP to include medical terms and change the name to SNOMED. Further expansion occurred when in January 2002 SNOMED was combined with the United Kingdom National Health Services Clinical Terms Version 3 (CTV3) known as the Read codes and released as SNOMED-CT version 1. 2
Since its inception, SNOMED has moved from the original pathology orientation to a logic-based healthcare terminology 3 It has four different components: concept codes, descriptions, relationships, and reference sets. 2 Despite continuous development, it is still unknown to what extent SNOMED is used in the clinical area and what benefits it has achieved. 3, 4
SNOMED is a reference terminology, however there have been, and continue to be, efforts by the developers of the various nursing terminologies to map their interface terminologies to SNOMED-CT. Currently the the nursing working group of SNOMED and the ICNP are working together to create a clinically useful standardized nursing terminology that can either be used alone or be mapped to from any of the standardized terminologies.
SNOMED is clinically oriented and focuses on capturing the information needed for clinical care. 5 As such it is not in competition with ICD-10 which is statistically focused.
An National Institute of Health page with much information about both SNOMED and LOINC.
1. International Health Technology Standards Development Organisation. History of SNOMED CT. n.d.; http://www.ihtsdo.org/snomed-ct/history0/ . Accessed March 24, 2014.
2. SNOMED-CT. 2014; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOMED_CT .
3. Cornet R, de Keizer N. Forty years of SNOMED: a literature review. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2008;8 Suppl 1:S2.
4. Rasmussen AR, Rosenbeck K. SNOMED CT implementation: implications of choosing clinical findings or observable entities. Stud. Health Technol. Inform. 2011;169:809-813.
5. Bowman S. SNOMED, ICD-11 Not Feasible Alternatives to ICD-10-CM/PCS Implementation. 2014; http://journal.ahima.org/2014/06/12/snomed-icd-11-not-feasible-alternatives-to-icd-10-cmpcs-implementation/ . Accessed October 21, 2014, 2014.
Additional Resources for SNOMED-CT
Matney, S. A., Warren, J. J., Evans, J. L., Kim, T. Y., Coenen, A., & Auld, V. A. (2012). Development of the nursing problem list subset of SNOMED CT(R). J Biomed Inform, 45(4), 683-688. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2011.12.003.
This article describes efforts to create an interoperable set of nursing diagnoses for use in the patient problem list and EHR to support interoperability.
IHTSDO. SNOMED CT – Adding Value to Electronic Health Records. 2014.
Although originally posted in Feb 2014 by IHTSDO, this disappeared. However, I find the information important enough to repost.This posting provides a good summary of the benefits of SNOMED as well as how often it is updated.
Bartz, C. C., & Hoy, D. (2011). Web-based collaboration for terminology application: ICNP C-space. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 169, 759-763.
Casey, A., Spisla, C., Konicek, D., & Warren, J. J. (2006). Practical definition of SNOMED CT concepts: The case of education, advice and counselling. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 122, 742-745.
Kim, H., Harris, M. R., Savova, G., & Chute, C. G. (2006). Content coverage of SNOMED-CT toward the ICU nursing flowsheets and the acuity indicators. [Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural]. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, 122, 722-726.
Kim, T. Y., Hardiker, N., & Coenen, A. (2014). Inter-terminology mapping of nursing problems. J Biomed Inform, 49, 213-220.
Park, H. T., Lu, D. F., Konicek, D., & Delaney, C. (2007). Nursing interventions classification in systematized nomenclature of medicine clinical terms: a cross-mapping validation. [Validation Studies]. Comput Inform Nurs, 25(4), 198-208; quiz 209-110. doi: 10.1097/01.NCN.0000280590.35690.7d
Park, H. A., Lundberg, C., Coenen, A., & Konicek, D. (2011). Evaluation of the content coverage of SNOMED CT representing ICNP seven-axis version 1 concepts. [Evaluation Studies
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't]. Methods of Information in Medicine, 50(5), 472-478. doi: 10.3414/ME11-01-0004.
Ravvaz, K., Senk, P., Patrick, T. B., Coenen, A., Kim, T. Y., Zhao, H., . . . Lang, N. M. (2008). Mapping nursing concepts to ontologies for evidence-based nursing. [Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't]. AMIA Annu Symp Proc, 1105.
Created October 15, 2014
