Semantic tags are part of FSN descriptions. They are placed in parentheses at the end of FSNs when authoring concepts. They indicate the domain to which a concept belongs. For example, body structure, disorder, or specimen.
The purpose of semantic tags is to disambiguate concepts which have the same commonly used word or phrase.
For example,
The following table contains the semantic tags for each domain.
| Domain | Semantic tags |
| Body structure (body structure) |
|
| Clinical finding (finding) |
|
| Environment or geographical location (environment / location) |
|
| Event (event) |
|
| Observable entity (observable entity) |
|
| Organism (organism) |
|
| Pharmaceutical / biologic product (product) |
|
| Physical force (physical force) |
|
| Physical object (physical object) |
|
| Procedure (procedure) |
|
| Qualifier value (qualifier value) |
|
| Record artifact (record artifact) |
|
| Situation with explicit context (situation) |
|
| SNOMED CT Model Component (metadata) |
|
| Social context (social concept) |
|
| Special concept (special concept) |
|
| Specimen (specimen) |
|
| Staging and scales (staging scales) |
|
| Substance (substance) |
|