National activities

In 2008, New Zealand focused on SNOMED CT education and familiarization activities, including facilitating three nationwide SNOMED CT workshops and completing a series of meetings for interested parties. These meetings were widely supported by a cross-section of clinical and health informatics professionals. It is widely recognized that SNOMED CT is key for the advancement of electronic health information in New Zealand.

 

New Zealand has a number of primary health organizations and some community nursing organizations that are looking at SNOMED CT. As part of this process, we invited the directors of nursing and key nursing leaders to a national meeting to discuss the value of SNOMED CT in the nursing context. As a result, the nursing profession are now exploring areas for preliminary SNOMED CT implementation.

 

New Zealand is actively participating in the Mapping Special Interest Group and working on a local medicines terminology based on the Australian Medicine Terminology. We are also working with several groups who are in the planning stages of small scale SNOMED CT implementations.

 

We are currently developing the strategic approach and alignment with the emerging e-health strategy for New Zealand, and setting up governance structures that will cover terminology and classification standards within New Zealand.

 

Implementation plans and other activities

We are investigating the use of SNOMED CT in a national cervical screening service.

 

Affiliate activities

There are strong expressions of interest in affiliation, but so far we only have limited implementations outside of pilot projects.

 

Number of Affiliate Licensees

The number of accepted affiliate licenses is thirty.