SNOMED CT is a systematically organized collection of medical terms and codes used in electronic health records to encode clinical meanings and support effective recording of health data. It provides comprehensive and validated clinical terminology, and enables consistent representation of clinical content. SNOMED CT terminology consists of concepts, descriptions, and relationships between concepts, and it supports both pre-coordinated and post-coordinated expressions to encode clinical thoughts. Its purpose is to improve patient care by facilitating recording, querying, and analysis of clinical information in electronic health records.
2. A systematically organized computer processable
collection of medical terms providing codes,
terms, synonyms and definitions used in clinical
documentation and reporting. SNOMED CT is
considered to be the most comprehensive,
multilingual clinical healthcare terminology in the
world.
3. The primary purpose of SNOMED CT is to encode
the meanings that are used in health information
and to support the effective clinical recording of
data with the aim of improving patient care.
4. SNOMED CT provides the core general terminology
for electronic health records. SNOMED CT
comprehensive coverage includes: clinical
findings, symptoms, diagnoses, procedures, body
structures, organisms and other etiologies,
substances, pharmaceuticals, devices and
specimens.
5. 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 electronic health records.
Is mapped to other international standards.
Is already used in more than fifty countries.
6. Recording clinical observations.
Querying health records for information.
Deriving medical knowledge from clinical
documents.
Automating repetitive jobs like posting orders
thereby improving efficiency and productivity.
Raising rules-based alerts and warnings to help
reduce errors.
7. Concepts representing clinical meanings that
are organized into hierarchies.
Descriptions which link appropriate human
readable terms to concepts.
Relationships which link each concept to other
related concepts.
Reference sets used to group Concepts or
Descriptions into sets, including reference sets
and cross-maps to other classifications and
standards.
8.
9. Clinical expressions using SNOMED CT concepts
can be of two types: pre-coordinated expressions,
which use a single SNOMED CT concept identifier;
and post-coordinated expressions, which contain
more than one SNOMED CT identifier.
10. Pre-coordinated Expression
Clinical thought: Viral pneumonia
single pre-coordinated term exists for this
Post-coordinated Expression
Clinical thought: Family history of hypertension
No single pre-coordinated term exists for this.
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13. SNOMED CT is the terminology that supports the EMR.
On its own it does nothing
It is very clinician friendly
It is multilingual
It allows very powerful data analytics
It augments decision support capabilities of an EMR
