International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation
The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation, trading as SNOMED International, is private company limited by guarantee and established under the laws of England that owns SNOMED CT, a leading clinical terminology used in electronic health records. IHTSDO was founded in 2007 by 9 charter member countries in order to acquire the rights of SNOMED CT from the College of American Pathologists and make the development of a global clinical language for healthcare an international, collaborative effort.
Governance
IHTSDO governance is defined in the IHTSDO Articles of Association. The organization is headquartered in the United Kingdom.Since 2007 the number of member countries has increased from 9 to 29. The members were : Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. The member countries provide the bulk of the institutional financing through payment of yearly member fees, which are based on gross national income. Members of IHTSDO can be either an agency of a national government or another body which has been endorsed by an appropriate national government authority within the country it represents. Member countries commit themselves to the dissemination of the IHTSDO terminologies within their jurisdiction, including where appropriate the creation of local translations, extensions, and mappings.
The general assembly is the organization's highest authority and is composed of representatives from all member countries with equal representation. The GA is collectively charged with assuring that the purpose, objects and principles of the association are pursued and that the interests of IHTSDO are safeguarded. The GA appoints the management board, which has overall responsibility for the management and direction of IHTSDO and has a duty to act in the best interests of the organization. The member countries are also represented by the member forum, which provides input on member priorities and helps develop the IHTSDO plan of work.
The organization is structured into four major areas: customer relations, operations, products & services, and strategy.
Seven advisory groups provide advice to the management team. In addition there are topic-specific project groups and special interest groups which supplement and report to the standing committees. These groups are open and are not elected. IHTSDO PGs and SIGs include:
| IHTSDO special interest groups | IHTSDO project groups |
| Anesthesia | Anatomy Model |
| Concept Model | Collaborative Editing Roadmap |
| Education | Content Product Development Planning |
| IHTSDO Workbench Developers | Event, Condition and Episode Model |
| Implementation | Family/General Practice Refset and ICPC Mapping |
| International Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | IHTSDO Translation Tooling |
| Mapping | Machine & Human Readable Concept Model |
| Nursing | Mapping SNOMED CT to ICD-10 |
| Pharmacy | Migration |
| Translation | Observable and Investigation Model |
| Organism & Infectious Disease Model | |
| Request Submission | |
| Substance Hierarchy Redesign | |
| Translation Quality Assessment |
IHTSDO's work is documented on its website. The internal communication is supported by a Collaborative content management system.
Strategic directions
The broad vision for IHTSDO is set out in their Articles of Association. A new five-year plan was formulated in 2015.IHTSDO aims to achieve interoperability and harmonization between its terminology products and those standards produced by other international standards development organisations. In support of this IHTSDO has negotiated a number of collaboration agreements with other SDOs, such as the World Health Organization, HL7, International Council of Nurses, IEEE, Regenstrief Institute & NPU, openEHR, and WONCA.
Meetings
IHTSDO organizes periodic conferences. Generally within these conferences time is allocated to meetings of advisory groups, project groups and SIGs, to enable them to meet face to face. In addition there are meetings of the Member Forum and the Affiliate Forum. Advisory Groups, PGs and SIGs also communicate throughout the year via conference calls and manage messages and documents in a content management system.Awards
SNOMED International's Award of Excellence is awarded annually.| Year | Country | Recipient |
| 2009 | USA | James Campbell |
| 2010 | UK | Gwen Smith |
| 2011 | UK | Ian Green |
| 2012 | Australia | Dion McMurtrie |
| 2013 | Sweden | Kristina Brand Persson |
| 2014 | USA | Judith Warren |
| 2015 | USA | Jim Case |
| 2016 | Sweden | Daniel Karlsson |
| 2017 | USA | Bruce Goldberg |
| 2018 | Australia | Michael Lawley |
| 2019 | USA | Mark Jurkovich |
| 2022 | Chile / China | Ajelandro Mauro / Vicky Fung |
| 2023 | USA / Netherlands | Scott W. Campbell / Pim Volkert |
| 2024 | Republic of Korea | Hyeoun-Ae Park |
SNOMED International’s Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded annually.
| Year | Country | Recipient |
| 2010 | Canada | Roger Coté |
| 2012 | UK | Martin Severs |
| 2014 | UK | Anne Casey |
| 2015 | USA | Kent Spackman |
| 2016 | Argentina | Guillermo Reynoso |
| 2017 | USA | Betsy Humphreys |
| 2018 | USA | Andrew Wiesenthal |
| 2019 | Netherlands / New Zealand | Lies Van Gennip / Stewart Jessamine |
| 2022 | UK | David Markwell / Jeremy Thorp |
| 2023 | USA | Keith E. Campbell / Vivian Auld |
| 2024 | Malaysia | Md Khadzir Sheikh Ahmad |