IHTSDO and SNOMED CT Support
The College of American Pathologists (CAP) is the original creator of SNOMED Clinical Terms® (SNOMED CT®)—a globally recognized controlled medical vocabulary—and has fostered its development for more than 40 years. CAP STS continues to develop and maintain SNOMED CT on behalf of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO®).
The IHTSDO is an international not-for-profit organization based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The IHTSDO acquires, owns, and administers the rights to SNOMED CT and other health terminologies and related standards.
The purpose of the IHTSDO is to develop, maintain, promote and enable the uptake and correct use of its terminology products in health systems, services, and products around the world, and undertake any or all activities incidental and conducive to achieving the purpose of the Association for the benefits of the members.
The IHTSDO seeks to improve the health of humankind by fostering the development and use of suitable standardized clinical terminologies, notably SNOMED CT, in order to support safe, accurate, and effective exchange of clinical and related health information. The focus is on enabling the implementation of semantically accurate health records that are interoperable. Support to Association Members and Licensees is provided on a global basis allowing the pooling of resources to achieve shared benefits.
SNOMED CT—An IHTSDO Product
SNOMED, SNOMED CT, and IHTSDO are trademarks of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization. All other trademarks used in this document are the property of their respective owners.
SNOMED CT is a dynamic, scientifically validated clinical health care terminology and infrastructure that makes health care knowledge more usable and accessible. It provides a common language that enables a consistent way of capturing, sharing, and aggregating health data across specialties and sites of care. Among the applications for SNOMED CT are electronic medical records, ICU monitoring, clinical decision support, medical research studies, clinical trials, computerized physician order entry, disease surveillance, image indexing and consumer health information services.
SNOMED CT is comprehensive on its own, but also can map to other medical terminologies and classification systems already in use. This avoids duplicate data capture, while facilitating enhanced health reporting, billing, and statistical analysis. It also provides a framework to manage language dialects, clinically relevant subsets, qualifiers and extensions, as well as concepts and terms unique to particular organizations or localities.
SNOMED CT combines the content and structure of the SNOMED Reference Terminology (SNOMED RT) with the United Kingdom’s Clinical Terms Version 3 (formerly known as the Read Codes).
SNOMED CT
The English language editions, US and UK, of SNOMED CT are released twice a year, in January and July. The Spanish edition is released twice a year, in April and October.
January 2011 International Release
January 2011 International Release (Spanish Edition)
July 2011 International Release
July 2010 International Release (Spanish Edition)
SNOMED Download Instructions for Licensees
Instructions to Download
- Visit http://download.snomed.org or ftp://download.snomed.org.
- Please use the login and password provided in the download notification e-mail sent from SNOMED Terminology Solutions. If you have not received a notification, please contact snomedsolutions@cap.org.
- The login and password should be entered in all lower case letters.
First-Time Users of the http:// Site
- To view and download files, Sun’s plug-in version 1.4.2_04 of the Java runtime environment (JRE) must be installed.
- To download the JRE, select the link in the middle of “Welcome” page.
- Please disable any pop-up blockers, virus scans, or firewalls before downloading and installing the JRE. Disabling of software and JRE installation may require permission from your information technology team.
SNOMED CT CLUE Browser Download
- Before installing the CLUE Browser, please register for a validation key. To obtain a validation key for the CLUE Browser, please visit the CliniClue website to complete and submit the on-line registration form.
- A validation key will be e-mailed to you at the e-mail address you enter on the Web form. The Clinical Information Consultancy maintains the CLUE Browser and releases the validation keys.
UK SNOMED CT Language Edition Download
- • To keep in sync with updates from the United Kingdom’s (UK) National Health Service, only the SNOMED CT UK Language Edition is delivered in January and July (same schedule as the SNOMED CT US Language Edition). The UK administrative maps, UK drug extension, OPCS-4 map, ICD-10 map, and UK CLUE Browser will be delivered in April and October.
If you have any questions regarding downloads, please contact snomedsolutions@cap.org.