National Release Centre (NRC) in collaboration with Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd., hosted a two-day interactive workshop on 'Introduction to SNOMED CT' at Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad on June 2 and 3, 2015.

The workshop was part of a series of interactive workshops being hosted by Apollo Hospitals and NRC across the country to give fillip to usage of SNOMED CT in the healthcare IT sector.

SNOMED CT is a comprehensive, multilingual clinical healthcare terminology used across the globe. It enables standardisation of clinical vocabulary for use in Electronic Medical Records / Electronic Health Records (EHR) by hospitals and healthcare providers, besides aiding in generation of unique EHR for each individual.

SNOMED CT is owned, maintained, and distributed by the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO), Denmark. Currently 28 countries are member of IHTSDO. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW) has designated Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, to run the National Release Centre, for distribution and management of SNOMED CT within India.

“The interactive workshop is a milestone in shaping the e-health future of India. Apollo Hospitals and National Release Centre are reaching out to the stakeholders in the country to acquaint them with SNOMED CT, ramp up the pace of its implementation and pave the way towards bringing parity with the international standards,” says Sangita Reddy, joint managing director, Apollo Hospitals Enterprises Ltd. “This initiative will remove uncertainty, errors which happen in healthcare, because there will be far efficient data integration and also validation of appropriate protocols from one medical centre to other becomes better,” Reddy added.

The workshop provided a platform for the users and implementers to comprehend SNOMED CT, its implementation, underlying concept model, levels at which clinical information can be effectively represented and mapping to other international vocabulary standards. It was attended by medical professionals, researchers, hardware and software manufacturers and system integrators.