SNOMED CT is the most comprehensive and precise, multilingual health terminology in the world. To learn more, see our SNOMED CT overview page.
SNOMED CT is an extensive clinical terminology that was formed by the merger, expansion, and restructuring of SNOMED RT® (Reference Terminology) and the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) Clinical Terms (also known as the Read Codes). It is the most comprehensive clinical vocabulary available in English (or any language). SNOMED CT is concept-oriented and has an advanced structure that meets most accepted criteria for a well-formed, machine-readable terminology. It has been designated as a US standard for electronic health information exchange in Interoperability Specifications produced by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel and has also been adopted for use by the US Federal Government, through the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) Initiative, for several clinical domains.
SNOMED CT is a comprehensive clinical terminology that provides clinical content and expressivity for clinical documentation and reporting. SNOMED CT contains concepts for both human and non-human medicine and some of the covered domains are:
- Clinical findings, including disorders,
- Procedures, broadly defined as including all health-related activities,
- Observable entities which, when given a value, provide a specific finding or assertion about health-related information.
The terminology is comprised of concepts; descriptions, which contain terms that explain the concepts; and relationships, which define the type of the association between two related concepts.
To learn more about SNOMED CT please see the IHTSDO SNOMED CT Starter Guide and the NLM SNOMED CT Overview.