SNOMED International is transitioning to a modern suite of digital tools to support internal collaboration, external knowledge sharing, and its active global community of practice. These changes align with the organization’s goal of improving usability, performance, and access.
The migration includes a shift from how SNOMED International presently uses Confluence to:
- SNOMED Documents for official SNOMED CT documentation and guides. This new document space is expected to launch in early September.
- SNOMED Spaces for structured shared spaces (e.g. governance, advisory and clinical groups, etc.) Migration from the existing Confluence environment is scheduled to take place September 9, 2025.
- SNOMED Forums for community-wide discussions and announcements. SNOMED Forums will soon be available.
- And these and other tools will now be supported and accessible via a SNOMED International Account Dashboard – A single sign-on approach for SNOMED International users to be automatically logged in, for easy access to SNOMED’s tooling suite, also going live on September 09, 2025.
We will also be migrating all users to new SNOMED International Accounts. Further details will be provided once the migration is complete. Your username will remain the same; however, you will be required to reset your password. To support a smooth transition, please ensure that your existing account is associated with the correct email address. If an update is required, kindly contact techsupport@snomed.org.
This transition will reduce costs, improve content discoverability, and support a more intuitive user experience. The rollout is currently underway and is on track to be completed by Q3 2025. We will continue to keep you informed through these planned communications, including specific dates supporting go live.
For more information or questions, please contact info@snomed.org.
SNOMED International is pleased to announce a collaboration with the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN), a group of digital health advocates from South and South-East Asia committed to promoting interoperability for better health.
AeHIN, which was founded in 2011, has more than 2,600 members and a presence in 84 countries. Incorporated in Hong Kong, it maintains secretariats in Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. The organization has supported regional capacity-building efforts, including conferences, general meetings, convergence workshops, certification training, webinars on specialized topics and other activities to enable the development and implementation of members’ national digital health strategies.
Over the years, both organisations have collaborated on SNOMED CT education support for the AeHIN general meeting events across Asia. AeHIN was an exhibitor at SNOMED CT Expo 2024 in South Korea and Expo 2019 in Malaysia, where it showcased its work in promoting digital health interoperability across Asia, shared insights on the Network’s advocacy for global standards such as SNOMED CT, and engaged with representatives from various countries and stakeholders interested in promoting interoperable health information systems.
The collaboration commits both parties to educate, promote and guide the safe, accurate and effective exchange of health information to improve healthcare around the world. It enables AeHIN to use SNOMED CT within its Community of Interoperability Labs (COIL) for proof-of-concept use cases, and calls for both organizations to educate Asia-Pacific clinicians, vendors and researchers on SNOMED CT terminology and advocate for its adoption.
Read the news release for more details.
SNOMED International is pleased to welcome Mongolia as the most recent Member to join our global community.
Mongolia, an East Asian country with a population of 3.5 million, is the 12th Asia Pacific country to join SNOMED International, the not-for-profit organization that owns, administers and develops SNOMED CT. Membership enables the country-wide use of SNOMED CT, a comprehensive, multilingual healthcare terminology created for use by healthcare professionals that enables the care of individuals to be captured in electronic health records, facilitating information sharing, decision support and analytics for safe and effective health information exchange.
Mongolia currently uses some international health data standards, such as ICD10 and DICOM, to support data exchange across systems. With a commitment to strengthen clinical information exchange by implementing SNOMED CT, the country will make even greater strides toward enabling interoperability.
“Embracing SNOMED CT is a vital step towards a unified, accurate, and efficient healthcare system,” says Myagmarulzii Enkhbaatar, Head of Digital Development, Health Data Division, Ministry of Health in Mongolia. “By integrating this comprehensive clinical terminology, we pave the way for better patient outcomes, seamless data exchange, and empowered clinical decision-making. Together, we build a healthier future."
Read the release here.
SNOMED International, along with a team of research and technology focused subject matter experts, recently contributed to a research paper documenting the development of entity linking models to link spans of free-text data in clinical notes with specific topics in the clinical terminology SNOMED CT. The paper, which had been planned as part of the competition, was recently published in the highly respected, peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the outcomes of which were derived from SNOMED International’s Entity Linking Challenge held in 2024.
The SNOMED CT Entity Linking Challenge, which ran from January to March 2024, trained machine learning models to link clinical notes with specific topics based on the largest publicly available dataset of labeled clinical notes that had been de-identified and annotated with SNOMED CT concepts. It was supported by platform host partner DrivenData, which hosts online data science competitions; AI consultancy Veratai; Physionet, the Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals, and an annotation team.
The paper, which was co-authored by SNOMED International, Veratai and the winning teams of the competition, describes the basis of the work – a large set of 74,808 annotations curated across 272 discharge notes spanning 6,624 unique clinical concepts – and the evaluation process. It compares the approaches used by the winning solutions and highlights the most challenging factors affecting clinical entity linking models. It also describes the data set and the policy-based approach to the development of the “ground truth” data set and provides an example of its approach to scoring. Importantly, it analyzes the reasons for low-scoring concepts, and details a number of lessons learned.
Read the release here.
SNOMED International salutes the State of the World’s Nursing 2025, a recently released report that provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the global nursing workforce.
Framed in the context of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an “action plan for people, the planet and prosperity,” the nursing report confirms that the 12 policy priorities of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global strategic directions for nursing and midwifery 2025 remain highly relevant for the period 2026-2030. It also identifies five emerging policy priorities in the areas of advanced practice nursing, gender equality, digital health and technology, the climate agenda, and nurses in situations of war and conflict.
According to the report, nurses – the largest occupational group in the healthcare sector with about 28 million practitioners worldwide – “must be prepared and fully supported to competently utilize digital technologies across areas of professional practice from education to practice, research and management."
SNOMED International has long supported this goal, initially informally, and then more formally beginning in 2020, when SNOMED International and the International Council of Nurses (ICN) announced an agreement to work together to integrate the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) into SNOMED CT in a systematic way. The formal collaboration followed ICN’s review of its role in health informatics globally, enabling them to develop a strategy for supporting nursing globally.
“The inclusion of nursing content in SNOMED CT greatly augments its value and utility,” says SNOMED International CEO Don Sweete. “It also supports the level of granularity nursing needs while connecting the profession to the broader healthcare community.”
Read the release here.
Our most recent podcast is now available! This one, moderated by Kelly Kuru, features Ole Våge, chair of SNOMED International’s Translation User Group and a terminologist at the Helsedirektoratet; Feikje Hielkema-Raadsveld, computational linguist at Nictiz, a Dutch knowledge organization for digital information provision in healthcare; and Kai Kewley, a technical specialist for SNOMED International's Implementation Support Team. It examines the growing importance of translation in the SNOMED CT world as more countries whose first language is not English become Members and as our global stakeholder community continues to grow, focusing on new approaches, technologies and tools to tackle this challenging issue. You can listen to it at this link https://coded-conversations-episode-1.simplecast.com/episodes/translating-snomed-ct-new-tools-tactics-and-approaches or search for Coded Conversations on your favourite podcast platform. Stay tuned for part 2 of the conversation as we delve more deeply into translation tools!
SNOMED International is pleased to announce that the October 2025 Business Meetings schedule and SNOMED CT Expo 2025 program have been confirmed, and early-bird registration* is now open for the only global conference focused on SNOMED CT.
The hybrid October Business Meetings will be held from October 19-24, 2025, followed by SNOMED CT Expo 2025 from October 22-24, both located at A Room with a Zoo (Flanders Meeting & Convention Center) in Antwerp, Belgium. The Expo will also be delivered online (with Zoom Events).
Save with early-bird rates and hotel accommodation and register today.
Please visit the links below for more information, including how to book accommodation:
October 2025 Business Meetings
SNOMED CT Expo 2025
Why attend?
- Learn about global SNOMED CT implementations, interesting research and exciting advances in interoperability and digital health around the world.
- Support discussion, knowledge exchange, and the ongoing development of SNOMED CT.
- Connect with colleagues, share your expertise and grow your professional network.
Attending the Business Meetings online?
Zoom links for all ‘open’ meetings will be shared on the SNOMED International "What's on this Week" calendar.
Please note that pre-registration for these is NOT required.
Questions?
Contact events@snomed.org
We thank our sponsors and exhibitors:
SNOMED International is pleased to announce that the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) and the Healthcare Information and Management System Society (HIMSS), following years of research and review of a number of existing ontologies, are recommending SNOMED CT to their members as the standard anatomy terminology for imaging.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) - Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM) Enterprise Imaging Community (HSEIC) identified anatomy as a crucial data element necessary to facilitate the consumption and interoperability of medical imaging data in 2019. The first paper, The Importance of Body Part Labeling to Enable Enterprise Imaging: A HIMSS-SIIM Enterprise Imaging Community Collaborative White Paper, was published in 2021. The HIMSS-SIIM Enterprise Imaging Community Data Standards Evaluation Workgroup conducted a comprehensive assessment of anatomical ontologies with the aim of facilitating enterprise imaging. They analyzed different ontologies and assessed their suitability for the complex landscape of enterprise imaging.
The result of the evaluation work is the whitepaper, "Report of the HIMSS-SIIM Enterprise Imaging Community Data Standards Evaluation Workgroup: Anatomic Ontology Assessment," published in June 2024. SNOMED CT received the highest possible marks for almost every criterion and use-case workflow step. The assessment ultimately concludes that SNOMED CT is the most viable solution for standardizing anatomy terminology across the medical imaging community.
Read the news release here.
SNOMED International has several voluntary Advisory Groups designed to provide expert advice on the development and implementation of its products and services. See IHTSDO Advisory Group Manual Home for information on each of the groups.
At this time, SNOMED International is seeking volunteers to serve on the following Advisory Group:
- Editorial (EAG)
How do I apply for a position on a SNOMED International Advisory Group?
Selection Process
The deadline for submitting a nomination is Friday, 26 June 2025. Applications will be reviewed by the AG Chair, and their recommendations will be put forward to the CEO for final approval. All candidates will be notified of the results by email in June.
Application Checklist
Applicants, please ensure to include the following items in your email submission to governance@snomed.org:
- Completed Nomination Form, including your declaration of interest and self-assessment of relevant skills per the applicable skills matrix (see document below)
- Your CV (resume)
For additional information on the Advisory Group nomination process, kindly contact Yohani Daruis at governance@snomed.org
SNOMED International has renewed its agreement with the American College of Surgeons (ACS), through its American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) program. The renewed three-year agreement advances both organizations’ commitment to improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients globally.
The renewal of the collaboration agreement furthers the work SNOMED International began in 2020 with the establishment of the Cancer Synoptic Reporting Project Group, which was formed to develop comprehensive SNOMED CT concepts suitable for structured pathology reports. It includes pathology experts who provide input from the community of practice on the development, maintenance and use of SNOMED CT in this specific domain. Their work contributed to the 2024 release of the SNOMED CT Clinical Implementation Guide for Cancer Synoptic Reporting, a comprehensive resource to facilitate standardized and structured reporting in cancer care.
Renewed commitment details
As part of the renewed agreement, the AJCC will provide SNOMED International with a comprehensive list of Allowable Values (codes), without definitions. The list will include allowable values in the AJCC Cancer Staging System. However, the AJCC will not provide definitions for these Allowable Values and users will require permission to use the definitions from the ACS. The AJCC may create other Allowable Values in future versions of the AJCC Cancer Staging System and will provide them to SNOMED CT at time of publication.
Read the news release here.
Looking to catch up on content from this year’s SNOMED International April Business Meetings in Oslo? Please see below!
Opening Keynote and Community Updates (Monday, April 7)
Herko Coomans (International Digital Health Coordinator (Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, The Netherlands) delivered the April 2025 Business Meeting Keynote: 'GDHP: A Global Commitment to Digital Health'
This was followed by the April 2025 SNOMED International & Community Updates.
Download the combined presentation here.
Open General Assembly - Host Country Presentation (Tuesday, April 8)
Alfhild Stokke, Norwegian General Assembly representative, Chair of the General Assembly and host of the April 2025 Business Meetings, presented on the National Release Centre's digital health strategy and accomplishments with SNOMED CT implementation.
Alfhild was followed by Tom van Renterghem, who provided a brief overview of what to expect at SNOMED CT Expo 2025 in Antwerp, Belgium.
View the presentation here.
SNOMED CT in Norway - hosted by the Norwegian Directorate of Health (Thursday, April 10)
The SNOMED CT in Norway Day Conference featured a variety of Norwegian and International speakers.
Click here to view the video playlist.
Keynote by Jørn Andre Jørgensen: 'Dental health and big data: finding new connections'
Innovation Spotlight by Anthony Shek: 'AI and Language Models'
Looking ahead...
October 2025 conference
We really hope to see you in Antwerp for the October Business Meetings and SNOMED CT Expo 2025, from October 19-24, 2025.
Registration will open in mid June.
Questions?
Contact events@snomed.org.
The SNOMED International 2024 Annual Report is now available.
The document, which chronicles the organization’s key activities over 2024, wraps up the 2020-2025 strategy with a reflection on and an accounting of our goals for the five-year period and our successes meeting those objectives. It outlines a number of first-time endeavours for the organization in 2024 and the benefits realized from those activities.
In addition, the report offers insights into the many different ways the organization engaged with its Members and other stakeholders over 2024 and provides a snapshot of the 2025-2030 Strategy, which was developed in 2024 in conjunction with our governance bodies.
Some of the features we’re most proud of in this year’s report are the Member-focused articles that highlight their activities and successes in implementing and adopting SNOMED CT, including New Zealand discussing its use of a “working bee” to advance the use of the terminology, the piece on global cancer reporting agencies that discusses multi-agency efforts to use SNOMED CT to improve cancer care, and the article detailing our work with LOINC by Regenstrief to develop the LOINC Extension.
“The 2024 annual report enables us to tell the story of our ecosystem of global stakeholders – their goals, and our work to better understand how we can support the drive for interoperability across the globe,” says SNOMED International CEO Don Sweete.
Read the news release here.
Visit the Results section of the Strategy, Objectives and Results page to read the report.
SNOMED International and Syadem have announced the release of the Unified Nomenclature of Vaccines (NUVA) Extension.
The release follows the April 2024 announcement of the formal collaboration between the two organizations, which was formed to facilitate the creation of comprehensive vaccination histories for individuals over time, regardless of the original vaccine source and data format. The partners also agreed to collaborate to integrate NUVA content as an extension in SNOMED International’s Community Content Area, define processes for ensuring content alignment, and, where relevant, include NUVA concepts in the SNOMED CT International Edition.
The NUVA Extension includes all of the NUVA vaccine content, including branded products, valences and medicinal product role. It facilitates alignment with and strengthens access to vaccine content in a SNOMED CT format, supporting both clinical and regulatory requirements for vaccine information.
The SNOMED International team participating in the NUVA collaboration work are attending the International Summit on Vaccine Coding & Standards Conference on May 9, 2025, in Bordeaux, France, where the release will be formally announced.
Read the release here.
View the NUVA Extension here.
