Today we published a blog post written by SNOMED International CIO Rory Davidson in which he explains what the SNOMED CT concept lookup tool is and who it was developed for.
Rory explains the advantages it offers non SNOMED CT users, and highlights the tool’s capabilities, such as being able to look across all extensions and editions, not just the SNOMED CT International Edition.
In the blog, he touches on the drivers for developing the tool, such as the challenges many European Union countries face in cross-border data-sharing with countries that are not yet SNOMED International Members.
He also discusses the technology behind the tool and explains how it is similar to, yet different from, Google search. Check out the post here.
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London, United Kingdom, February 23, 2023 -- SNOMED International is welcoming two new directors to its Management Board.
The organization’s Management Board is a governance body with legal and oversight responsibility for the management and direction of SNOMED International. It offers the organization a wealth of experience in global healthcare and informatics, advanced technologies, organizational governance and business leadership and risk management, guiding us as we execute against our strategy and plan for the future. Management Board directors’ expertise and industry relationships are key to helping SNOMED International leverage technologies and strengthen partnerships with our many stakeholders worldwide, and guide the organization on the development and execution of our current five-year strategy.
Anne-Marie Grey brings more than 30 years of humanitarian fundraising and marketing experience, both in the United States and internationally to SNOMED International. The recent Executive Director and CEO for USA for UNHCR, Anne-Marie is the Principal Director at New York-based Grey-O’Keefe Consulting LLC, a training, strategy, and marketing agency that brings causes and corporations together to positively impact society and business. She brings to the Board her unique and extensive leadership skills in both the not-for-profit and private sectors. Anne-Marie has mentored and advised non-profit leaders on resource mobilization, leadership and strategy at organizations such as the Forbes Nonprofit Council, an invitation-only, fee-based organization for senior-level executives in successful nonprofit organizations; USA for UNHCR; UNHCR; Save the Children; and UNICEF. In addition to an educational background in art history, literature, finance and non-profit management, Anne-Marie has obtained DiSC and Five Behaviors partner certification, and is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach and International Coaching Federation credential trained coach, facilitator, author, and international speaker.
Bersabel Ephrem brings to the Management Board 32 years of experience in the areas of leadership, governance and public health policy and program management and has worked in several organizations within the Canadian Federal Government. Most recently, she served as the Director General of Centre of Communicable Diseases and Infection Control within the Public Health Agency of Canada. Prior to that, Bersabel served as the Senior Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization on management reform, where she provided leadership and oversight in the development of policies and institutionalized key governance initiatives. Bersabel has also served as Director General at the International Affairs Division of Health Canada. In this role, Bersabel led the Canadian delegation on several groundbreaking negotiations in WHO and the Pan American Health Organization. Her international experience includes serving as the Chair of APEC Health Task Force, head of the Secretariat for the Global Health Security Initiative and as the Vice Chair of the Board of Members at the Global Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Research and Development Hub, providing her with unique insights on the challenges global healthcare-focused organizations must navigate and on successful strategies to advance on their goals.
The breadth of skills possessed by the organization’s new and existing Management Board representatives are highly relevant to SNOMED International’s global membership structure and to the organization’s work developing SNOMED CT, a global terminology working to become the “one language of health” worldwide.
Joanne Burns, Chair of the Management Board since 2020, remarks on the importance of bringing together a group of individuals with a variety of perspectives and experience from across this organization’s many valued stakeholder groups. “Ms. Grey’s and Ms. Ephrem’s depth of experience and skills honed across multiple national and international organizations and sectors over many years will contribute significantly to the strategy, finance and risk acumen of the SNOMED International Management Board.”
SNOMED International CEO Don Sweete concurs. “Each of our new Management Board directors offers a suite of diverse strengths and highly relevant in-depth knowledge that will help move the organization forward,” he said. “I look forward to the positive impact they will have as they settle in and become integrated into the current Board.”
Ms. Grey and Ms. Ephrem, both appointed to a two-year term, join a strong group of six Management Board Directors: Joanne Burns, Chair; and Directors Dr. Matic Meglic; Dr. Gong Mengchun; Dr. Isabelle de Zegher; Professor Michael Lewis; and Dr. Andrew Roddam.
Share your SNOMED CT knowledge and expertise!
Are you interested in sharing your SNOMED CT knowledge and expertise on a global stage? Do you have an implementation or other SNOMED CT experience that could contribute to advancing the utility of the clinical terminology and improving patient outcomes worldwide? Submit an abstract for a SNOMED CT Expo 2023 oral presentation or poster today!
This year’s in-person and online event takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, from October 26-27, 2023
Why submit?
Presenting at Expo is an excellent opportunity to shine a global spotlight on your professional expertise and on your organization’s achievements. It also enables you to contribute to the global pool of SNOMED CT knowledge.
Submissions must focus on using the clinical terminology in a product, service or research context across one of the four program streams:
- Enhancing Clinical Practice and Outcomes
- Terminology Leading Practices
- Demonstrating Implementation Excellence
- Advances in Research and Innovation
How to submit:
Submit your abstract here.
Key dates:
- Submission deadline: April 17, 2023
- Submitters notified: May 29, 2023
- Conference: October 26-27, 2023
Visiting Atlanta
Did you know that Atlanta...
- is considered a city in a forest? The U.S. National Forest Service has recognized it as the most heavily forested urban area in the country;
- is home to more than 5 million residents in 11 counties;
- is also home to The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and
- does everything on a BIG scale:
- Its airport, with terminals the size of 45 football fields, has been classified as the busiest in the world;
- It has 55 streets named Peachtree;
- The city’s aquarium is the largest in the country; and
- It’s home to The Varsity, the largest and busiest drive-in restaurant in the world.
Hotel accommodations
This year’s event will be held at The Starling Atlanta Midtown, an urban oasis featuring a bold, eclectic design and easy access to surrounding amenities. Rooms sell out quickly, so book your stay today!
Accommodation:
SNOMED International has negotiated extremely competitive rates at the venue (both for their current rates at the hotel, and also in the surrounding area). Rooms must be reserved before March 17, 2023 to obtain the discounted rates but we strongly recommend reserving your room as soon as possible in order to secure your booking. Please see our website here for pricing and the SNOMED booking link.
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We very much look forward to welcoming you again to London. For any additional information pertaining to the April 2023 Business Meetings, please contact events@snomed.org
31 January 2023, Strasbourg, France, and London, United Kingdom -- SNOMED International and the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM), Council of Europe, have signed an agreement governing the creation, maintenance and distribution of a map between both organisations’ terminologies. The agreement came into effect in September 2022.
The agreement resulted from the need identified by SNOMED International’s Drug Extension User Support Group to align EDQM Standard Terms and SNOMED CT dose forms to serve specific use cases. It will focus on putting in place mechanisms for the release, maintenance and updating of the mapping between the lists of controlled terms in the EDQM Standard Terms database and the equivalent lists in SNOMED CT.
Both organisations will review the conditions of the agreement every five years. They will also ensure that the quality of the map being created under the agreement meets the needs of stakeholders, and will put in place plans to distribute, maintain and update it. Additionally, any new content that is needed to create the map will be included in regular SNOMED CT International Edition releases and made available by both parties. As the work develops, both organisations may also propose future collaborative activities based on emerging requirements in the European Union or elsewhere.
Read the full announcement and contact info@snomed.org with inquiries.
February 02, 2023, London, United Kingdom and Colorado, United States –- The Monarch Initiative has signed a five-year collaboration agreement with SNOMED International to develop maps from the clinical terminology SNOMED CT to Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO - a standardized vocabulary of phenotypic abnormalities encountered in human disease) and to HPO from SNOMED CT.
HPO is a flagship product of the Monarch Initiative, a U.S. National Institutes of Health-supported international consortium dedicated to semantic integration of biomedical and model organism data with the ultimate goal of improving biomedical research, and an integrative data and analytic platform connecting phenotypes to genotypes across species, bridging basic and applied research with semantics-based analysis. It is also a central component of one of the 13 driver projects in the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health strategic roadmap.
As part of the agreement, the organizations will work together to develop mapping conventions by which both maps will be created, along with use cases. Both organizations will also collaborate on quality assurance, promoting the maps to their respective stakeholders and defining and agreeing upon an ongoing maintenance and updating process and policy for the developed maps.
Read the full announcement and contact info@snomed.org with inquiries.
LONDON, NOV 30, 2022 -- Roughly one year ago, SNOMED International declared its intention to extend the core of SNOMED CT’s structured clinical terminology to deliver an open, standalone terminology in support of the International Patient Summary (IPS) for non-SNOMED International Members.
The organization has now issued the first production release of SNOMED International’s IPS Terminology that adds the hierarchy, defining relationships and extra synonyms from the SNOMED CT International Edition to form a sub-ontology of SNOMED CT that can be loaded into a terminology server for the specified scope of the IPS.
Throughout 2022, SNOMED International has been configuring its approach to making the IPS Terminology a tangible artifact in its lineup of products and services. First released in its beta version in April 2022 for focused stakeholder testing and feedback, the IPS Terminology is accompanied by a User Guide to support implementers in non- Member regions to understand the features, capabilities and limitations of the IPS Terminology package. Providing an overview of the IPS Terminology's scope and features, the Guide also provides IPS Terminology use cases as well as direction on how to implement the IPS Terminology in a terminology server, and how to upgrade to a full SNOMED CT edition if additional terminology content is required.
Read the full announcement and submit all inquiries to info@snomed.org
SNOMED International and the International Diet Dysphagia Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) have signed an agreement to incorporate IDDSI Framework v2.0 content into SNOMED CT to enable use in electronic health records globally.
In effect since mid-September 2022, the agreement has been driven by community requests as well as by the need identified by the SNOMED International Nutrition Care Process Terminology (NCPT) Clinical Project Group to include IDDSI Framework v2.0 content in order to facilitate the inclusion of NCPT in SNOMED CT.
Both organizations will develop a communications plan to ensure stakeholders are kept up-to-date as the work progresses.
Read the full announcement and contact info@snomed.org with inquiries.
Hi All,
It was great to see everyone onsite and online at last week's September Business Meetings.
For those that didn't have a chance to join, you can find presentations and recordings here.
Enjoy!
September 14, 2022
SNOMED International and the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) have signed a five-year agreement that will contribute to global improvements in care and services for people with epilepsy, a group of disorders characterized by recurrent seizures.
The ILAE Commission for Big Data and SNOMED International have established an Epilepsy Clinical Project Group. Members of this group will work together to define processes to maintain and update epilepsy content within the international edition of SNOMED CT’s clinical terminology, the world’s most comprehensive healthcare terminology product...
Read the full announcement here and contact info@snomed.org with question.
August 25, 2022
The Western Cape Government is the first regional member on the African continent to adopt the use of SNOMED CT, the most comprehensive global clinical terminology. Adoption of SNOMED CT in Western Cape will enable health information exchange between the region’s participating medical institutions, in addition to satisfying requirements of the 2014 National Health Normative Standards Framework.
The Western Cape is the third largest populated province in South Africa after Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, with a population of approximately 7 million. The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability of the Western Cape Department of Health was a major game changer in the fight against COVID-19. The ICT-related lessons from the last three years will be leveraged to do business differently, including improving access to care beyond the walls of our health facilities, and to address the quadruple burden of disease...
Read the full announcement and contact info@snomed.org with inquiries.
Last year, SNOMED International announced it would transition to more frequent releases of the SNOMED CT International Edition rather than just twice a year. Since January 2022, the organization has released the clinical terminology at the end of each month.
Consuming the release on a monthly basis is not required, however, as Members can continue on a biannual schedule if they so choose – there are numerous benefits to being able to access SNOMED CT more frequently. Frequent releases support better interoperability, as organizations and entities can now consume release content that is more aligned with other organizations, for example. As well, it makes it easier to complete smaller projects...
Read about the SNOMED CT highlights made available with frequent releases in the first half of 2022
Questions? Contact releases@snomed.org
By Dr. James Case
July 29, 2022
At the last April 2022 business meetings, SNOMED International staff, along with its governance bodies and community of practice, gathered in London to learn about the latest SNOMED CT and SNOMED International advances.
One of the topics of particular interest to many in the audience (and beyond) focused on the organization’s efforts over the past year to engage and support those who would like to contribute content to SNOMED CT. As SNOMED CT evolves and matures, and as the organization works to become more agile and responsive to community needs, it has taken a number of big steps over the past year in the delivery and development of its products. That includes making the SNOMED CT International Edition available on a monthly basis (frequent releases) and making it easier for users to contribute to it.
The linked Q&A with Dr. James Case, SNOMED International’s Chief Terminologist, explores these initiatives and their impact on SNOMED CT and its user community...
July 6, 2022
London, United Kingdom and Chicago, Illinois
The American College of Surgeons (ACS) and SNOMED International have entered into a licensing agreement to include agreed upon American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) references in SNOMED CT. The AJCC is administered by the Chicago-based American College of Surgeons.
The focus of the agreement enables SNOMED International to include updated AJCC staging concepts critical to understanding cancer and treating patients, while eliminating outdated AJCC content no longer relevant to clinical care within SNOMED CT.
The ACS is dedicated to improving the quality of care of surgical patients, including cancer patients requiring surgery, safeguarding standards of care in an optimal and ethical practice environment, and setting the standard for surgical care in the United States. Evidence-based anatomic staging is the critical factor to understanding cancer and treating patients and new breakthroughs are opening up ever-more promising possibilities for precisely defining a prognosis and recommending a treatment based on a patient's individual data. The AJCC has developed and compiled cancer staging references for quickly finding important information about different types of cancers. These references and tools are excellent resources for those treating patients with cancer...
