Figure 29The subtype hierarchies lead from more general Concepts with low granularity to more
specific and detailed Concepts.
The unique Concept identifiers of SNOMED CT Concepts are numeric identifiers and do
not contain information related to the meaning of a Concept or Description. This means
it is not possible to infer anything about the meaning of a Concept from the numeric
value of the Identifier or from the sequence of digits that form the identifier.
The meaning of a Concept can be determined from relationships to other Concepts and
from associated Descriptions that include human readable terms. In the context of
data entry, this means that entering SNOMED CT Concepts must be done by using associated
Concept Descriptions, and hence by use of the clinical spoken language instead of
using the Concept codes for data entry.
Figure 30SNOMED CT Descriptions support the use of clinical language for documentation and
the synonyms support flexibility in the terms used to represent the Concepts.
Additionally, SNOMED CT allows for coding different Descriptions that belong to the
same Concepts. This support flexible data entry, by enabling the possible to use the
Descriptions preferred in a specific organization or within a specific user group.
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