SNOMED CT

SNOMED CT, which stands for Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms, is a comprehensive standard for the electronic exchange of clinical health information. It is widely used in electronic health records (EHRs) to ensure consistent and precise clinical terminology across different healthcare systems and countries. SNOMED CT facilitates the recording, sharing, and retrieval of clinical data by providing a standardized vocabulary.

The terminology within SNOMED CT is organized into four main categories: concepts, descriptions, relationships, and reference sets. Concepts represent clinical ideas or phenomena, descriptions provide human-readable terms for these concepts, relationships define how concepts are related, and reference sets group concepts for specific purposes.

SNOMED CT codes are numerical and six digits long, at minimum, but they can be longer. For example, the SNOMED CT code of anemia (disorder) is 271737000.  

 SNOMED CT continually updates its content based on user needs and feedback. In 2013, the United States federal government required SNOMED CT in EHRs to comply with Stage 2 of Meaningful Use.