International Effort for Term Standards
An international effort is currently underway to establish the use of common terminology within electronic health records. The collaborative, the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHT SDO) includes Australia, the UK, and Sweden, among others. The U.S. joined the effort on April 26th, Health and Human Services (HHS) will participate in the collaborative.
IHT SDO is utilizing the standard language, or nomenclature, developed by the College of American Pathologists: the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED). SNOMED is already being used throughout the United States and has been widely available without charge since 2003. It is further expected that this common language set, already endorsed by the Health Information Technology Standards Panel, will gain further credence with recognition from HHS.
Part of the IHT SDO effort will encourage common language use even among developing countries through dissemination of materials from the World Health Organization.
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