SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms) is considered to be the most comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology in the world. Each year, avoidable deaths and injuries occur because of poor communication between healthcare practitioners, or because busy practitioners forget or neglect to follow their own criteria for best practices. The delivery of a standard clinical terminology for use across the world's health information systems can therefore make a significant contribution towards improving the quality and safety of healthcare.

SNOMED CT aims to contribute to the improvement of patient care through underpinning the development of systems to accurately record health care encounters and to deliver decision support to health care providers. Ultimately, patients will benefit from the use of SNOMED CT to more clearly describe and accurately record their care, in building and facilitating better communication and interoperability in electronic health record exchange, and in creating systems that support health care decision making.

SNOMED CT intellectual property rights were transferred to the SNOMED SDO® in the formal creation of the IHTSDO.

SNOMED CT was originally created by the College of American Pathologists by combining SNOMED RT and a computer based nomenclature and classification known as Clinical Terms Version 3, formerly known as Read Codes Version 3, which was created on behalf of the UK Department of Health and is Crown copyright.

For examples of SNOMED CT implementation experience, click here