IHTSDO and the European Union FP7 project COMMODITY12 have signed a "public good" agreement for free use of SNOMED CT within the project.

The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) is pleased to announce the signing of a “Public Good” agreement for use of SNOMED CT by the European Union FP7 project COMMODITY12 (COntinuous Multi-parametric and Multi-layered analysis Of DIabetes TYpe 1 & 2).  This agreement builds on the positive relationship between the IHTSDO and European Union projects, which was established by an earlier agreement with the EU epSOS Project.

The COMMODITY12 project involves partners in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The project will use SNOMED CT to represent clinical information relevant to diabetic care delivery. As national IHTSDO Members, three of the countries involved already benefit from free use of the entirety of SNOMED CT. This “Public Good” agreement allows COMMODITY12 participants in European countries that have not yet joined the IHTSDO, free use of a selected set of SNOMED CT concept identifiers and descriptions. The agreement, which will last for the planned duration of the project, is restricted to concepts and descriptions that are relevant for the treatment of Diabetes patients and related cardiovascular co-morbidities.

Andy Wiesenthal, Vice-Chair of the IHTSDO Management Board, said of the announcement, “The IHTSDO is delighted to enter into this agreement with the COMMODITY12 project as part of its commitment to support public good initiatives. The request for this agreement recognizes the key role that SNOMED CT can play in collaborative electronic health record developments. The COMMODITY12 project shares many of our key objectives related to improving delivery of care by clinical and social care professionals. We look forward to hearing of and learning from the experience of this project as it uses SNOMED CT to enable meaningful representation of clinical records”.

Oliver Keller, COMMODITY12 Project Manager from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) stated, “The COMMODITY12 project is at the frontier of research on use of ICT for the treatment of Diabetes with co-morbidities. At the end of the project we will deliver products which will be at the state of the art for Health ICT. Therefore we sought for state of the art standards, and we are glad we reached a “Public Good” agreement with IHTSDO for use of SNOMED CT during the project, in all the countries of the project. This makes it possible to show the value of SNOMED CT in our systems, and by enhancing the interoperability of our solutions, SNOMED CT improves the impact of our project on the healthcare of the European citizens.”

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