The Need for a Global Language - SNOMED CT Introduction.

SNOMED CT is the most comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology in the world. It is a resource with comprehensive, scientifically validated clinical content. SNOMED CT enables consistent, processable representation of clinical content in electronic health records. When implemented in software applications, SNOMED CT can be used to represent clinically relevant information consistently, reliably and comprehensively as an integral part of producing electronic health information. SNOMED CT supports the development of comprehensive high-quality clinical content in health records. It provides a standardized way to represent clinical phrases captured by the healthcare professional and enables automatic interpretation of these. SNOMED CT is a clinically validated, semantically rich, controlled vocabulary that facilitates evolutionary growth in expressivity to meet emerging requirements. SNOMED CT based clinical information benefits individual patients and clinicians as well as populations and it supports evidence based care. The use of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) improves communication and increases the availability of relevant information. IHTSDO works with other standards oganisations to ensure interoperability and a key area has been the work with ICN to enable the use of ICNP and SNOMED CT by the nursing profession internationally.