NEHTA Hosts IHTSDO Meetings in Brisbane this week
27th August, 2007. The National E-Health Transition Authority today kicks off a week long schedule of meetings as host of the recently established International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (the IHTSDO).
Alongside Australia, other Member countries of the IHTSDO include Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
NEHTA Chief Executive Dr Ian Reinecke said NEHTA is delighted to host the IHTSDO meetings in Australia. “International SNOMED CT is representative of one of these key areas and, with NEHTA's continued focus on SNOMED CT's development as the single clinical language for Australia, we are a long way towards advancing e-health nationally," he said.
NEHTA became a Charter Member of the IHTSDO on behalf of Australia in April this year. NEHTA's membership secures guaranteed free and ongoing access for the use of SNOMED Clinical Terms1 within Australia.
As a Member, NEHTA is also responsible for distributing and managing SNOMED CT in Australia, and will develop and maintain content specific to Australia. Online registration is now available for those who wish to access SNOMED CT.
During the week NEHTA will host a SNOMED CT Implementation Forum for vendors, government representatives and other interested stakeholders. This will provide participants with the opportunity to hear from experts from the UK and US who are experienced in implementing SNOMED CT. Local and international vendors who are currently implementing SNOMED CT within their products will also share experiences with the audience.
In line with the IHTSDO meetings NEHTA is also releasing for review an early (alpha) release of the Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) to receive feedback ahead of the final release for clinical use later this year.
The AMT is built as an extension to SNOMED CT and will provide a standard and consistent way of identifying and naming medicines information for Australian users. The early release includes terminology data that describes the medicines registered or listed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) that appears on the Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits (PBS) as of July 2007.
The latest International release of SNOMED CT is also now available from NEHTA. This and the early AMT release are available to SNOMED CT license holders.