New SNOMED International-ICH collaboration supports public health

 KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 -- SNOMED International and the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) are announcing the release of important new maps between global medical terminologies SNOMED CT and MedDRA.

This collaborative effort is the first deliverable of a new agreement entered into between SNOMED International and ICH.

SNOMED International is the not-for-profit organisation that owns and maintains SNOMED CT, the world’s most comprehensive clinical terminology with over 350,000 concepts ranging across diagnosis, signs and symptoms and tens of thousands of surgical, therapeutic and diagnostic procedures.

This joint effort has produced two independent maps (MedDRA to SNOMED CT and SNOMED CT to MedDRA) which have been derived from frequently used and key pharmacovigilance MedDRA terms identified from the European Medicines Agency and the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

In addition, a set of COVID-19 related terms are also included in the first production release of the maps to capture important aspects of the pandemic.

The maps are intended to facilitate the exchange of data between regulatory databases (which use MedDRA) and healthcare databases/electronic health records (which use SNOMED CT).

In the opposite direction, these same key terms coded in MedDRA representing adverse events, warnings, and other regulatory information could be converted into SNOMED CT so that the information is available in the patient’s record to aid in clinical decision-making.

Welcoming the evolution of the organisation’s relationship with ICH, SNOMED International Chief Executive O􀂨cer, Don Sweete said in a statement: “It is exciting to see a long-term alliance borne from a collaborative project created to improve drug safety for patients and citizens.”

The Production version of the two maps is being made available to licensed SNOMED CT and MedDRA users on April 30 and will be based on the January 2021 version of SNOMED CT and the September 2020 version of MedDRA.

-- BERNAMA