Question

What is SNOMED CT? What are the purpose and use of SNOMED CT? What are the three main components? Define one hierarchy of SNOMED CT.

Answer 1

SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms) is a standardised, multilingual vocabulary of clinical terminology that is used by physicians and other health care providers for the electronic exchange of clinical health information.

Purposes are

• To encode the meanings that are used in health information
• To support the effective clinical recording of data with the aim of improving patient care.
• It provides the core general terminology for electronic health records
• It helps in organising the content of electronic health record systems
• It is used to directly record clinical details of individual in electronic patient records
• It supports long term patient care

Three main components are

1.concepts- representing clinical meanings that are organised in to hierarchies

2.Descriptions- which link appropriate human readable terms to concepts

3. Relationships- which link each concept to other related concepts

Hierarchy

Example: Event concepts are one of the hierarchy among nine hierarchies

• Associated with -represents a clinically relevant association between concepts without either asserting or excluding a casual or sequential relationship between the two.
• Occurrence -- refers to the specific period of life during which a condition first presents.