The implementation and adoption of SNOMED CT can enable a multitude of benefits for individual patients, clinicians, and populations. Some of these include:
Individual Patients and Clinicians
- Recording clinical information consistently across healthcare systems.
- Seamless data exchange and interoperability between different healthcare systems.
- Provides real-time advice to support clinical decisions.
- Allowing accurate and comprehensive analysis that identifies patients who require follow-up or changes in treatment.
- Supports multilingual use.
Populations
- Identify emerging health issues by monitoring population health trends.
- Providing consistent coding, therefore reducing costly duplication and errors.
- Enabling the delivery of relevant data to support clinical research and contribute evidence for future improvements in treatment.
- Providing an audit trail of care delivery with enhanced options for detailed analysis of clinical records.
Evidence-based Healthcare
- Enabling links between clinical records and enhanced clinical guidelines and protocols.
- Enhancing the quality of care experienced by individuals.
- Reducing costs of inappropriate and duplicative testing and treatment, limiting the frequency and impact of adverse healthcare events.
- Raising the cost-effectiveness and quality of care delivered to populations.
Source: Adapted from SNOMED International: https://www.snomed.org/value-of-snomedct (Accessed 20 September 2023).