The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced that it will participate in a new international effort to encourage faster adoption of standard clinical terminology for electronic health records (EHRs).
The U.S. has joined eight other countries in forming the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHT SDO), a group devoted to making standard medical terminology available throughout the world. To this end, the group has acquired the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), a system of standardized medical terminology, from the College of American Pathologists.
IHT SDO will work to make standard terminology available in developing countries, and will align SNOMED CT with international public health standards, including those produced by the World Health Organization. It will also assume responsibility for the ongoing maintenance, development, quality assurance, and distribution of SNOMED CT.
Other charter members of IHT SDO include Australia, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the U.K.
By AuntMinnie.com staff writers
April 27, 2007
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