SNOMED negotiations miss deadline – but continue

Talks to negotiate a new International Standards Development Organisation (SDO) for the clinical terminology, SNOMED CT, missed their first deadline at the end of December but are continuing, it has emerged.

SNOMED International issued a statement saying that it is continuing to work closely with representatives from nine countries on the creation of the SDO for the maintenance, development, quality assurance and release of SNOMED CT.

A spokesperson for SNOMED International told E-Health Insider that there was no firm deadline for the conclusion of the discussions but the indications are that they will take weeks rather than months.

SNOMED CT is a standardised healthcare terminology providing comprehensive coverage of diseases, clinical findings, therapies, procedures and outcomes. The terminology is one of the core standards to be mandated by Connecting for Health (CfH) in all the systems of the NHS IT modernisation programme.

When implemented in software applications, SNOMED CT represents clinically-relevant information consistently, reliably and comprehensively as an integral part of producing electronic health records.

The plan is for intellectual property rights to be transferred to the SDO from the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the current home of SNOMED CT.

The new organisation is destined to be based in Denmark, which is one of the nine prospective charter countries of the SDO, along with the UK, Australia, Canada, Lithuania, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the US.

A SNOMED International said agreement had been reached, subject to finalisation of terms, on:

• the terms of transfer of intellectual property for SNOMED from the college to the SDO;

• the choice of Denmark as the country of incorporation for the SDO as a not-for-profit Danish Society;

• the structure of the financial model for the new organisation;

• the role of CAP as the initial support organisation for the SDO;

• a process and timeline for moving forwardto resolve the remaining questions and complete the tasks necessary for the formation of the SDO.

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