COPENHAGEN – The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) will collaborate with the World Health Organization (WHO) to harmonize WHO classifications and SNOMED CT to benefit health around the world.

The agreement supports the aims of WHO and IHTSDO to enhance health through better health information, officials said. Synergies between WHO classifications and SNOMED CT have the potential, through better information, to improve the accuracy, reliability, and quality of health and healthcare; to eliminate gaps in information; and to control costs.
 
"IHTSDO sees this collaboration as a way to make it easier for patients, clinicians, and health authorities to get and use accurate and trusted information," says Martin Severs, chairman of the IHTSDO Management Board. "We share the goal of having WHO classifications and SNOMED CT work effectively together in order to allow users of the standards from around the world to develop better information and to focus efforts on improving health and healthcare for individuals and populations."
 
WHO classifications and SNOMED CT are complementary tools. When used together appropriately, they make it easier to summarize information from individual patients' health records into aggregate results needed for health policy, health services management, and research.
 
"The road to health passes through information," says Tim Evans, WHO's assistant director general for information, evidence and research. "WHO and IHTSDO aim to increase collaboration to create and maintain jointly usable and integrated classification and terminology systems to make efficient and effective use of public resources and avoid duplication of effort. This is essential to create health information standards as a common language worldwide."
 
WHO classifications are used to capture key information on diseases, disability and interventions and other indicators of population health. Main classifications such as the ICD (International Classification of Diseases), in use for more than 100 years worldwide, provide data on life expectancy, causes of death, and inform the plans and decisions of health authorities in many countries. The detailed information that is aggregated for public health purposes using WHO classifications often comes from health records, which are increasingly electronic.

Summaries of information in electronic health records extracted in a way that respects privacy of patients are crucial for management, health financing and general health system administration, say IHTSDO officials.

As a result, the accuracy and consistency of EHRs is crucial for both patient care and to ensure sound management of health systems resources. SNOMED CT, a standardized health terminology, can help to represent clinically relevant information in a consistent, reliable, and comprehensive way in EHRs, they said.

The terminology is used to help patients and their care providers capture more detailed key information on disease, disability, and interventions in patients' health records. Managed by the IHTSDO, it is used for this purpose and others in countries around the world.