SNOMED CT Case for Investment - Final September 2021 - Flipbook - Page 39
FULL REPORT
S NOMED C T
What is it?
SNOMED CT content is represented by three
components:
1.
Concepts – there are over 350,000 clinical concepts (e.g.
Descriptions
products). The concepts are organized into hierarchies and
Represent clinical thoughts.
Every concept has a unique
numeric identifier.
linked through relationships into poly-hierarchies.
Enable meaning-based queries
clinical findings, diagnostic procedures, and pharmaceutical
2.
Concepts
Link human readable terms to
concepts.
Assist searching for concepts
and provides multi-lingual
support
Descriptions – is the unique name given to the concept plus
any synonyms used to describe the concept (e.g.
myocardial infarction (disorder) is the unique name and
synonyms include cardiac infarction, heart attack and so
on).
3.
Relationships – is an association between two concepts
(i.e. knowledge representation) that is defined in a manner
that a computer can process it.
Relationships
Link concepts to other concepts
whose meaning is related in some
way.
Support aggregation and queries