SNOMED International and the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) have signed a collaboration agreement that will enable the integration of the Tumour, Node, Metastasis (TNM) Classification of Malignant Tumours into SNOMED CT. The TNM Classification, which the UICC manages and publishes, is a globally recognised standard for classifying the extent and spread of cancer. SNOMED CT is a comprehensive, multilingual healthcare terminology created for use by healthcare professionals to capture the care of individuals in an electronic health record (EHR) and facilitate sharing, decision support and analytics, to support safe and effective health information exchange.
The TNM Classification is widely used in SNOMED International Member countries and is recommended by the organization’s relevant Clinical Reference Groups.
As part of the collaboration and integration of the two terminologies, SNOMED CT will provide the content and a model to enable TNM staging to be recorded in EHRs and other related records. The two organizations will ensure that the UICC staging values are represented in a way that enables users to unambiguously identify the UICC classification content.
The initial focus of this endeavour will be the 8th edition of the UICC TNM Classification; the agreement, however, includes the incorporation of relevant content from the 9th edition when it is available. In addition, the group will ensure that ongoing changes to SNOMED CT and UICC staging values are reflected in the integration.
Read the news release for more information.
