The SNOMED International Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Clinical Reference Group is a community of practice for laboratory managers, pathologists and the clinicians involved with managing laboratory/pathology orders and results data. These specializations supervise the processes and standards which respond to clinical requests for laboratory/pathology testing, support the order communication and results reporting services and set the standards for data quality and interoperability of results data serving the electronic health record and other healthcare databases for research and public health.  

The Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Clinical Reference Group has been established to ensure that the requirements of the international surgical pathology, laboratory and clinical medicine community continued to be maintained and updated within the SNOMED CT International Release, and also to define the requirements for the development of derivative products that support implementations focused on this clinical area.

Although the different specialties each have their own repertoire of specimens, methods and reporting structures, there is a considerable overlap in the concepts they might access, e.g. antibodies can be used in immunohistochemistry, ELISA tests and immunological tests in microbiology and virology. All reports develop during a diagnostic and laboratory process that starts with the order over performing the necessary steps to finally create a diagnostic report.

Data from different specialties may have to be integrated (anatomic and molecular pathology or hematology/ bone marrow biopsy/ blood values) before the final report is issued. Thus, interoperability bears the potential of cooperative diagnoses.

Therefore, the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Clinical Reference Group consists of different project groups, each dedicated to a special issue. Regular meetings of the whole group assure that the work remains coordinated from a perspective of the ontology.