The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has made the English and Spanish language editions of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) core content available, free of charge, through the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Unified Medical Language System, Metathesaurus.
Developed in collaboration with the U.K.'s National Health Service and the College of American Pathologists (CAP), SNOMED CT's controlled healthcare terminology includes comprehensive coverage of diseases, clinical findings, therapies, procedures, and outcomes. It provides the core general terminology for an electronic health record (EHR), containing more than 357,000 concepts with unique meanings and formal logic-based definitions organized into hierarchies.
The announcement follows the July 2003 five-year, sole-source contract between the CAP and the NLM to license English and Spanish language editions of SNOMED CT core content. Qualifying entities include U.S. federal agencies, state and local government agencies, territories, the District of Columbia, and any public, for-profit and non-profit organization located, incorporated, and operating in the U.S., according to the Northfield, IL-based SNOMED International.
By AuntMinnie.com staff writersMay 7, 2004
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