Canada
Canada’s representative to the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO®) is Canada Health Infoway and the SNOMED CT® terminology standard and related assets were made available to Canadian users through Infoway’s Standards Collaborative.
Canada Health Infoway is an independent, not-for-profit organization whose Members are Canada's 14 federal, provincial and territorial Deputy Ministers of Health. Launched in 2001, Infoway and its public sector partners have over 200 projects, either completed or underway, delivering electronic health record (EHR) solutions to Canadians – solutions that bring tangible value to patients, providers and the healthcare system. The goal is to have an interoperable EHR in place for 50 per cent of Canada by population by 2010.
The Infoway Standards Collaborative was launched in 2006 as a Canada-wide coordination function to support and sustain health information standards in Canada. It is responsible for the implementation support, education, conformance, and maintenance for EHR standards currently being developed by Infoway. It also encompasses several other standards initiatives including the Partnership for Health Information Standards, HL7 Canada, Canada's participation in DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) and, in conjunction with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), the secretariat to the Canadian Advisory Committee to ISO/TC 215 Health Informatics – and SNOMED CT® .
For more information on SNOMED CT® in Canada, please e-mail the Standards Collaborative Infodesk at standards(at)infoway-inforoute.ca. Or visit our SNOMED CT® webpage: http://sl.infoway-inforoute.ca/content/dispPage.asp?cw_page=snomedct_e.
