Kolkata, Nov 4: Days are not far away when a unique code will define a patient’s medical history and medical institutions in the country and elsewhere can have access to it.
The Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has included Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine- Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) as the standard for clinical vocabulary for use in medical records.
SNOMED CT is a popular coding standard in the Health IT industry. It is a comprehensive clinical terminology, originally created by the College of American Pathologists and, as of April, 2007, owned, maintained, and distributed by the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO).
At the moment, 28 countries are members of the IHTSDO.
This comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology, used across the globe enables standardization of clinical vocabulary for use in Electronic Medical Records/ Electronic Health Records (EHR) by hospitals and healthcare providers, besides aiding in generation of unique EHR for each individual.
The Union Health Ministry has designated the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, to run the National Release Center, for distribution and management of SNOMED CT within India.
