The Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) is a systematic, computer-processable collection of medical terms, in human and

veterinary medicine Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, management, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, disorder, and injury in animals. Along with this, it deals with animal rearing, husbandry, breeding, research on nutri ...

, to provide codes, terms, synonyms and definitions which cover

anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having i ...

diseases A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that a ...

, findings, procedures,

microorganisms A microorganism, or microbe,, ''mikros'', "small") and ''organism'' from the el, ὀργανισμός, ''organismós'', "organism"). It is usually written as a single word but is sometimes hyphenated (''micro-organism''), especially in olde ...

, substances, etc. It allows a consistent way to index, store, retrieve, and aggregate medical data across specialties and sites of care. Although now international, SNOMED was started in the U.S. by the

College of American Pathologists The College of American Pathologists (CAP) is a member-based physician organization founded in 1946 comprising approximately 18,000 board-certified pathologists. It serves patients, pathologists, and the public by fostering and advocating ...

(CAP) in 1973 and revised into the 1990s. In 2002 CAP's SNOMED Reference Terminology (SNOMED RT) was merged with, and expanded by, the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

's Clinical Terms Version 3 (previously known as the Read codes) to produce SNOMED CT. Versions of SNOMED released prior to 2001 were based on a multiaxial, hierarchical classification system. As in any such system, a disease may be located in a body

organ (anatomy) In biology, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in a structural unit to serve a common function. In the hierarchy of life, an organ lies between tissue and an organ system. Tissues are formed from same type cells to act together in a ...

, which results in a code in a topography axis and may lead to morphological alterations represented by a morphology code. In 2002 the first release of

SNOMED CT SNOMED CT or SNOMED Clinical Terms is a systematically organized computer-processable collection of medical terms providing codes, terms, synonyms and definitions used in clinical documentation and reporting. SNOMED CT is considered to be the mo ...

adopted a completely different structure. A sub-type hierarchy, supported by defining relationships based on description logic, replaced the axes described in this article. Versions of SNOMED prior to SNOMED CT are planned to be formally deprecated from 2017.Deprecation of Antecedent Versions of SNOMED by IHTSDO General Assembly
/ref> Therefore, readers interested in current information about SNOMED are directed to the article on

Purpose

SNOMED was designed as a comprehensive

nomenclature Nomenclature (, ) is a system of names or terms, or the rules for forming these terms in a particular field of arts or sciences. The principles of naming vary from the relatively informal conventions of everyday speech to the internationally ag ...

of clinical medicine for the purpose of accurately storing and/or retrieving records of clinical care in human and

. The metaphor used by Roger A. Côté, the first editorial chair, was that SNOMED would become the

periodic table of elements The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the (chemical) elements, is a rows and columns arrangement of the chemical elements. It is widely used in chemistry, physics, and other sciences, and is generally seen as an icon of ...

of medicine because of its definitional organization beyond the hierarchical design. Indeed, diseases and procedures were ordered hierarchically and are further referenced back to more elementary terms (see Reference Ontology and Multi-Axial Design, below).

History

SNOMED was originally conceived by Côté as an extension of the design of the Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology (SNOP) applicable for all medicine. SNOP was originally designed by Arnold Pratt to describe pathological specimens according to their morphology and anatomy (topography). The ambitious development of SNOMED required many more axes (see multi-axial design, below). SNOMED was jointly proposed for development to the

by Côté and Pratt. The former was appointed as editorial chair of the Committee on Nomenclature and Classification of Diseases of the CAP and developed the SNOMED from 1973 to 1997. In 1998, Kent Spackman was appointed to chair this committee and spearheaded the transformation of the multi-axis systems into a highly computable form (See

): a

directed acyclic graph In mathematics, particularly graph theory, and computer science, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) is a directed graph with no directed cycles. That is, it consists of vertices and edges (also called ''arcs''), with each edge directed from one ...

anchored in formal representation logic. In 2007, the newly formed

International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO), trading as SNOMED International, is an international non-profit organization that owns SNOMED CT, a leading clinical terminology used in electronic health records. ...

( IHTSDO) acquired all the Intellectual Property of

and all antecedent SNOMED versions. Brief timeline: * 1965 SNOP * 1974 SNOMED * 1979 SNOMED II * 1993 SNOMED International 3.0 * 1995 SNOMED Microglossary of Signs and Symptoms * 1993-98 SNOMED International versions 3.1-3.5 * 2002 First release of

* 2007 All versions of SNOMED acquired by IHTSDO * 2017 All SNOMED versions except

have been formally deprecated by IHTSDO

Reference ontology

SNOMED was designed from its inception with complex concepts defined in terms of simpler ones. For example, a disease can be defined in terms of its abnormal anatomy, abnormal functions and morphology. In some cases, the

etiology Etiology (pronounced ; alternatively: aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek (''aitiología'') "giving a reason for" (, ''aitía'', "cause"); and ('' -logía''). More completely, ...

of the disease is known and can be attributed to an infectious agent, a physical trauma or a chemical or pharmaceutical agent.

Multi-axial design

The current concept uses eleven (11) axes that comprise terms organised in hierarchical trees. The axes and some examples are provided below:

T (Topography) – Anatomic terms

* (T-28000)

Lung The lungs are the primary organs of the respiratory system in humans and most other animals, including some snails and a small number of fish. In mammals and most other vertebrates, two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of ...

* (T-32000)

Heart The heart is a muscular Organ (biology), organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as ca ...

* (T-51000)

Mouth In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on ...

* (T-D2500) Hip * (T-D9600)

Heel The heel is the prominence at the posterior end of the foot. It is based on the projection of one bone, the calcaneus or heel bone, behind the articulation of the bones of the lower leg. Structure To distribute the compressive forces exer ...

M (Morphology) – Changes found in cells, tissues and organs

* (M-40000)

Inflammation Inflammation (from la, inflammatio) is part of the complex biological response of body tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants, and is a protective response involving immune cells, blood vessels, and molec ...

* (M-44000)

Granuloma A granuloma is an aggregation of macrophages that forms in response to chronic inflammation. This occurs when the immune system attempts to isolate foreign substances that it is otherwise unable to eliminate. Such substances include infectious o ...

* (M-54700) Infarcted * (M-54701) Microscopic infarct ''For the Morphology axis, SNOMED ha
agreed
to collaborate and use the same harmonized codes shared with International Classification of Diseases for Oncology. Additional examples on topology are provided on that page.''

L (Living organisms) – Bacteria and viruses

* (L-21801)

Mycobacterium tuberculosis ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (M. tb) is a species of pathogenic bacteria in the family Mycobacteriaceae and the causative agent of tuberculosis. First discovered in 1882 by Robert Koch, ''M. tuberculosis'' has an unusual, waxy coating on it ...

* (L-25116)

Streptococcus pneumoniae ''Streptococcus pneumoniae'', or pneumococcus, is a Gram-positive, spherical bacteria, alpha-hemolytic (under aerobic conditions) or beta-hemolytic (under anaerobic conditions), aerotolerant anaerobic member of the genus Streptococcus. They ar ...

C (Chemical) – Drugs

* (C-C137A)

Bufferin Aspirin, also known as acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to reduce pain, fever, and/or inflammation, and as an antithrombotic. Specific inflammatory conditions which aspirin is used to treat in ...

Analgesic An analgesic drug, also called simply an analgesic (American English), analgaesic (British English), pain reliever, or painkiller, is any member of the group of drugs used to achieve relief from pain (that is, analgesia or pain management). It ...

Tablets * (C-C137B)

Caplets

F (Function) – Signs and symptoms

* (F-03003)

Fever Fever, also referred to as pyrexia, is defined as having a temperature above the normal range due to an increase in the body's temperature set point. There is not a single agreed-upon upper limit for normal temperature with sources using val ...

J (Occupation) – Terms that describe the occupation

* Kindergarten teacher (13420) * Computer programmer (08420) * Doctor (06105) * Professional Nurse (General) (07110) * Beautician (57040)

D (Diagnosis) – Diagnostic terms

* (D-13510)

Pneumococcal pneumonia Pneumococcal pneumonia is a type of bacterial pneumonia that is caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus). It is the most common bacterial pneumonia found in adults, the most common type of community-acquired pneumonia, and one of the ...

* (D-14800)

Tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...

* (D3-15000)

Myocardial infarction A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

P (Procedure) – Administrative, diagnostic and therapeutic procedures

A (Physical agents, forces, activities) – Devices and activities associated with the disease

S (Social context) – Social conditions and important relationships in medicine

* (S-10120)

Mother ] A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of ...

G (General) – Syntactic linkages and qualifiers

References

External links

Official page at snomed.org
(now redirects t
www.ihtsdo.org

SNOCat: the SNOMED Categorizer/Browser to automatically encode medical narratives - provided by the BiTeM group (http://bitem.hesge.ch) !
{{Medical classification Diagnosis classification Clinical procedure classification Anatomical terminology de:SNOMED