SNOMED Practice Lab Activity

SNOMED Practice Lab Activity

SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) is the most comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology in the world. SNOMED CT contributes to the improvement of patient care by underpinning the development of electronic health records (EHRs), which records clinical information in ways that enable meaning-based retrieval. This provides effective access to information required for decision support and consistent reporting and analysis. Patients benefit from the use of SNOMED CT because it improves the recording of EHR information and facilitates better communication, leading to improvements in the quality of care.

SNOMED CT is owned, maintained and distributed by the International Health Terminology Standard Development Organization (IHTSDO) (http://www.icn.ch/what-we-do/international-health-terminology-standards-development-organization-ihtsdo/), which is a not-for-profit association which is owned and governed by its national members. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), SNOMED CT is an extensive clinical terminology that was formed by the merger, expansion, and restructuring of SNOMED RT® (Reference Terminology) and the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) Clinical Terms (also known as the Read Codes). It is the most comprehensive clinical vocabulary available in English (or any language). SNOMED CT is concept-oriented and has an advanced structure that meets most accepted criteria for a well-formed, machine-readable terminology. It has been designated as a US standard for electronic health information exchange in Interoperability Specifications produced by the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel and has also been adopted for use by the US Federal Government, through the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) Initiative, for several clinical domains.

View the quick Jing tutorial on navigating the SNOMED CT online encoder. http://screencast.com/t/VIZRLbZhqSr
The National Cancer Institute provides free access to online coding with SNOMED CT. Click on the link http://nciterms.nci.nih.gov click on the SNOMED CT: Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms link, and click to accept the conditions associated with using the website.
Enter the following medical terms (one at a time) in the search box, and click on the Search button. Select the most appropriate code and record your answers:
Kidney failure, due to wrong medication given
Asthma, due to smoking
Pancreatitis, due to fatty diet
Migraine, with aura > 3 days
Dysentery, due to amoebic infection
Blindness, unilateral
Contact dermatitis, due to touching a papaya
Liver failure, due to alcoholism
Pneumonia, gram negative bacteria
Gun shot, abdominal injuries

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