IHTSDO
Encyclopedia
Introduction
The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO)is an international non-profit standards development organization. Its mission is to develop, maintain, promote and deliver medical terminology products in order to improve the health in a global scale through the development and application of appropriately standardized clinical terminologies in general. In particular, the IHTSDO promotes SNOMED CT
SNOMED CT
SNOMED CT , is a systematically organised computer processable collection of medical terminology covering most areas of clinical information such as diseases, findings, procedures, microorganisms, substances, etc...
to ensure safe, precise and effective exchange of clinical and health related information.
By pooling human and financial resources synergies are used in order to ensure a sustainable, high-quality terminology development. The resulting terminology products help accomplish the vision of a comprehensive, accurate, semantically interoperable and machine processable computer-based health record.
Governance
The IHTSDO is based in Denmark and constituted as an association under Danish Law. The founding of the organization was carried out by nine charter countries in 2007. Currently (2011) 17 countries are IHTSDO members (AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
). The countries largely finance the institution; they constitute the General Assembly, which nominates the Management Board. Member countries commit themselves to the dissemination of terminologies at a national level, including the creation of local translations, extensions, and mappings as well as contributing to the body of knowledge around its use and application.
Members of IHTSDO can be either an agency of a national government or other bodies (such as corporations or regional government agencies) endorsed by an appropriate national government authority within the country it represents. The IHTSDO welcomes new members.
The IHTSDO General Assembly (GA) is the highest authority of the Association and 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 the IHTSDO are safeguarded. Arrangements for Governance of the IHTSDO and SNOMED CT
SNOMED CT
SNOMED CT , is a systematically organised computer processable collection of medical terminology covering most areas of clinical information such as diseases, findings, procedures, microorganisms, substances, etc...
are set out in the IHTSDO Articles of Association. The GA appoints the Management Board (MB). The MB has overall responsibility for the management and direction of the IHTSDO and a duty to act in a manner so the best interests of the IHTSDO is ensured. The management of IHTSDO as well as the professional lead in content development and maintenance, technical issues, quality assurance and implementation is currently in the hands of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), a Chief Terminologist, a Chief Technical Architect, a Chief Quality Officer, and a Chief Implementation and Innovation Officer.
Four Standing Committees provide advice for the Management Board: Content Committee, Technical Committee, Quality Assurance Committee and Implementation & Innovation Committee. Furthermore there are topic-specific project groups (PGs) and special interest groups (SIGs) which report to the standing committees. All interested persons are invited to bring in their expertise into these groups. IHTSDO PGs and SIGs include:
| IHTSDO special interest groups (SIGs) | 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 their Website. The internal communication is supported by a Collaborative content management system.
Strategic Directions
The broad vision for IHTSDO is set out in the [Articles of Association http://www.ihtsdo.org/index.php?id=508 Articles of Association] . In 2008 the General Assembly and the Management Board agreed that the organization’s focus for the next 3-5 years should be to broaden the use of SNOMED CTSNOMED CT
SNOMED CT , is a systematically organised computer processable collection of medical terminology covering most areas of clinical information such as diseases, findings, procedures, microorganisms, substances, etc...
, within and across health information systems, countries and professions. Strategic Directions to 2015 describes IHTSDO’s plans for 2015. To ensure the implementation of the strategic directions, each Standing Committee develops a yearly action plan in their areas of responsibility.
The IHTSDO aims at achieving interoperability and harmonisation between its terminology products and standards produced by other international standards development organizations. To this end, harmonization bodies consisting of IHTSDO representatives and representatives of other SDOs have been established. Examples are HL7, ICN
ICN
ICN is a three letter abbreviation that may refer to:* IATA Code for Incheon International Airport near Seoul, South Korea*Educational institutes:** ICN Business School, French graduate business school in Nancy....
, IEEE, LOINC
LOINC
Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes is a database and universal standard for identifying medical laboratory observations. It was developed and is maintained by the Regenstrief Institute, a US non-profit medical research organization, in 1994...
& NPU, openEHR
Openehr
openEHR is an open standard specification in health informatics that describes the management and storage, retrieval and exchange of health data in electronic health records . In openEHR, all health data for a person is stored in a "one lifetime", vendor-independent, person-centred EHR...
, WHO
Who
Who may refer to:* Who , an English-language pronoun* who , a Unix command* Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism- Art and entertainment :* Who? , a 1958 novel by Algis Budrys...
, and WONCA. For each harmonisation body, the IHTSDO aims at signing an agreement, setting out an agenda and the objectives of the harmonisation process.
Meetings
The IHTSDO organizes periodic conferences open to an international audience. Generally within these conferences time is allocated to committees meetings, project groups and SIGs, to enable them to meet face to face and address their direction and priorities for the following year. Furthermore there are meetings of the Member Forum and the Affiliate Forum. Committees, PGs and SIGs communicate regularly via conference calls and manage messages and documents in its own content management system (CMS).Documentation
To support implementation of SNOMED CTSNOMED CT
SNOMED CT , is a systematically organised computer processable collection of medical terminology covering most areas of clinical information such as diseases, findings, procedures, microorganisms, substances, etc...
a number of publications are produced by the IHTSDO. These range from user guides to technical implementation guides as well as some educational materials and videos. The documents are available through the public website but some items such as the videos can be found through YouTube. Member countries also contribute into the public domain and documents, which can often be found on individual member country web sites; a link to these is provided on the IHTSDO web pages.
Office
The IHTSDO head office is located on the top floor of the Copenhagen IT University (Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 5te, 5A56 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark. A current overview of IHTSDO staff can be found on the IHTSDO website.The IHTSDO office can be contacted by E-Mail: info(at)ihtsdo.org, phone +45 36 44 87 36 and fax +45 44 44 87 36.