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92-408: The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation ( IHTSDO ), trading as SNOMED International , is private company limited by guarantee and established under the laws of England that owns SNOMED CT , a leading clinical terminology used in electronic health records. IHTSDO was founded in 2007 by 9 charter member countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden,

184-491: A public health emergency of international concern, marking the second such declaration in the last two years due to the virus's transmission. The WHO's Constitution states that its objective "is the attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health". The WHO fulfils this objective through its functions as defined in its Constitution: As of 2012 , the WHO has defined its role in public health as follows: Since

276-556: A SNOMED CT veterinary extension. This extension is managed by the Veterinary Terminology Services Lab at the Va-Md College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech. Earlier SNOMED versions had faceted structure ordered by semantic axes, requiring that more complex situations required to be coded by a coordination of different codes. This had two major shortcomings. On the one hand, the necessity of post-coordination

368-508: A common medical language used within electronic health record (EHR) systems. SNOMED CT enables information input into an EHR system during the course of patient care, while ICD facilitates information retrieval, or output, for secondary data purposes. In 2010s, the advantage of SNOMED CT over ICD was the multiple parent hierarchy of SNOMED CT. Since 2020 release of ICD 11, this advantage is less important because ICD-11 foundational level allows an ICD 11 concept to have multiple parents. LOINC

460-410: A compositional syntax that can be used to create expressions that represent clinical ideas which are not explicitly represented by SNOMED CT concepts. This mechanism exists because it is challenging to create and maintain all possible concepts upfront (as precoordinated concepts). For example, there is no explicit concept for a "third degree burn of left index finger caused by hot water". However, using

552-495: A convention concerning the bubonic plague was signed by sixteen of the nineteen states attending the Venice conference. While Denmark , Sweden-Norway , and the US did not sign this convention, it was unanimously agreed that the work of the prior conferences should be codified for implementation. Subsequent conferences, from 1902 until the final one in 1938, widened the diseases of concern for

644-774: A forum for scientific or policy discussions related to health. Its official publication, the World Health Report , provides assessments of worldwide health topics. The WHO has played a leading role in several public health achievements, most notably the eradication of smallpox , the near- eradication of polio , and the development of an Ebola vaccine . Its current priorities include communicable diseases , such as HIV/AIDS , Ebola , malaria and tuberculosis ; non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and cancer ; healthy diet , nutrition, and food security ; occupational health ; and substance abuse . The agency advocates for universal health care coverage, engagement with

736-494: A large number of concepts were redefined using formal expressions. However, the fusion with CTV3, as a historically grown terminology with many close-to user descriptions, introduced some problems which still affect SNOMED CT. In addition to a confusing taxonomic web of many hierarchical levels with massive multiple inheritance (e.g. there are 36 taxonomic ancestors for Acute appendicitis ), many ambiguous, context-dependent concepts have found their way into SNOMED CT. Pre-coordination

828-482: A multilingual thesaurus with an ontological foundation . Thesaurus-like features are concept–term relations such as the synonymous descriptions "Acute coryza", "Acute nasal catarrh", "Acute rhinitis", "Common cold" (as well as Spanish "resfrío común" and "rinitis infecciosa") for the concept 82272006. Under ontological scrutiny, SNOMED-CT is a class hierarchy (with extensive overlap of classes in contrast to typical statistical classifications like ICD). This means that

920-493: A number of collaboration agreements with other SDOs, such as the World Health Organization , HL7 , International Council of Nurses , IEEE , Regenstrief Institute & NPU, openEHR , and WONCA . IHTSDO organizes periodic conferences. Generally within these conferences time is allocated to meetings of advisory groups, project groups and SIGs, to enable them to meet face to face. In addition there are meetings of

1012-424: A number of the world's leading e-health countries and territories, including: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Czech Republic, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Republic of Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and Uruguay. SNOMED CT

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1104-745: A perpetual license for the core SNOMED CT (in Spanish and English) and its ongoing updates. In April 2007, SNOMED CT intellectual property rights were transferred from the CAP to the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) in order to promote international adoption and use of SNOMED CT. Now trading as SNOMED International, the organization is responsible for "ongoing maintenance, development, quality assurance, and distribution of SNOMED CT" internationally and its Membership consists of

1196-565: A ranked list of SNOMED CT descriptors to encode any clinical report, could help healthcare professionals to navigate the terminology. SNOMED CT is a terminology that can cross-map to other international standards and classifications. Specific language editions are available which augment the international edition and can contain language translations, as well as additional national terms. For example, SNOMED CT-AU, released in December 2009 in Australia,

1288-528: A resolution on disability prevention and rehabilitation , with a focus on community-driven care. 1977 and 1978: The first list of essential medicines was drawn up, and a year later the ambitious goal of " Health For All " was declared. 1986: The WHO began its global programme on HIV/AIDS . Two years later preventing discrimination against patients was attended to and in 1996 the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

1380-429: A resolution passed on the subject, Alger Hiss , the secretary general of the conference, recommended using a declaration to establish such an organization. Sze and other delegates lobbied and a declaration passed calling for an international conference on health. The use of the word "world", rather than "international", emphasized the truly global nature of what the organization was seeking to achieve. The constitution of

1472-443: A robust industry used standard. This is leading to an increase in the number of software tools and development of materials that contribute to knowledge base to support implementation. A number of on-line communities that focus on particular aspects of SNOMED CT and its implementation are also developing. In theory, description logic reasoning can be applied to any new candidate post-coordinated expressions in order to assess whether it

1564-501: A series of conferences that took place until 1938, about 87 years. The first conference, in Paris, was almost solely concerned with cholera , which would remain the disease of major concern for the ISC for most of the 19th century. With the cause , origin, and communicability of many epidemic diseases still uncertain and a matter of scientific argument, international agreement on appropriate measures

1656-511: A set of 7 314 codes and descriptions is free for use by users of DICOM -compliant software (without restriction to IHTSDO member countries). GPS was released in Sep 2019 and contains 21 782 concepts. SNOMED CT concepts typically belong to a single hierarchy (with the exception of drug-device combined concepts). Some hierarchies, have a concept model defined (e.g., clinical findings). For other domains (e.g., Organism, Substance, Qualifier value), there

1748-463: A simple Description logic (DL). E.g., the triplet Common Cold – causative agent – Virus , corresponds to the first-order expression forall x: instance-of (x, Common cold ) -> exists y: instance-of (y, Virus ) and causative-agent (y, x) or the more intuitive DL expression Common cold subClassOf causative-agent some Virus In the Common cold example the concept description

1840-481: A strategy for the inclusion of pre-coordinated content. There are still known deficiencies regarding the " ontological commitment " of SNOMED CT, e.g., the clarification of which kind of entity is an instance of a given SNOMED CT concept. The same term can be interpreted as a disorder or a patient with a disorder, for example Tumour might denote a process or a piece of tissue; Allergy may denote an allergic reaction or just an allergic disposition. A more recent strategy

1932-497: A subset of the EL++ formalism, restricting itself to the following operators: For understanding the modelling, it is also important to look at the stated view of a concept versus the inferred view of the concept. In further considering the state view, SNOMED CT used in the past a modelling approach referred to as 'proximal parent' approach. After 2015, a superior approach called "proximal primitive parent" has been adopted. SNOMED CT provides

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2024-562: Is "primitive", which means that necessary criteria are given that must be met for each instance, without being sufficient for classifying a disorder as an instance of Common Cold . In contrast, the example Viral upper respiratory tract infection depicts a fully described concept, which is represented in description logic as follows: This means that each and every individual disorder for which all definitional criteria are met can be classified as an instance of Viral upper respiratory tract infection. As of 2021, SNOMED CT content limits itself to

2116-696: Is a multinational and multilingual terminology, which can manage different languages and dialects. SNOMED CT is currently available in American English, British English, Spanish, Danish and Swedish, with other translations underway or nearly completed in French and Dutch. SNOMED CT cross maps to other terminologies, such as: ICD-9-CM , ICD-10 , ICD-O-3 , ICD-10-AM , Laboratory LOINC and OPCS-4 . It supports ANSI , DICOM , HL7 , and ISO standards. SNOMED CT consists of four primary core components: SNOMED CT "Concepts" are representational units that categorize all

2208-470: Is a parent or ancestor of, a child or other descendant of, or semantically equivalent to any existing concept from the existing pre-coordinated concepts. However, partly as the continuing fall-out from the merger with CTV3, SNOMED still contains undiscovered semantically duplicate primitive and defined concepts. Additionally, many concepts remain primitive whilst their semantics can also be legitimately defined in terms of other primitives and roles concurrently in

2300-482: Is a terminology that contains laboratory tests. Since 2017, SNOMED International started creating terms for LOINC components and created a set of SNOMED CT expressions that capture the meaning of many LOINC terms. There is overlap between MedDRA and SNOMED CT that is not beneficial for pharmaceutical industry. In 2021, two maps map between SNOMED CT and MedDRA were jointly published by both organizations (from SNOMED CT to MedDRA and from MedDRA to SNOMED CT). SNOMED CT

2392-466: Is also a child of Infectious disease . The taxonomic structure allows data to be recorded and later accessed at different levels of aggregation. SNOMED CT concepts are linked by approximately 1,360,000 links, called relationships . Concepts are further described by various clinical terms or phrases, called Descriptions, which are divided into Fully Specified Names (FSNs), Preferred Terms (PTs), and Synonyms . Each Concept has exactly one FSN, which

2484-412: Is an important desirable feature of a terminology. Prior 2020, International Classification of Diseases (ICD) did not allow post-coordination and SNOMED CT was the only terminology that supported postcoordination. Since 2020, a new version of ICD-11 now also supports postcoordination. The International Edition of SNOMED CT only includes human terms. In 2014, clearly veterinary concepts were moved into

2576-455: Is based on the international version of SNOMED CT, but encompasses words and ideas that are clinically and technically unique to Australia. SNOMED started in 1965 as a Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology (SNOP) and was further developed into a logic-based health care terminology. SNOMED CT was created in 1999 by the merger, expansion and restructuring of two large-scale terminologies: SNOMED Reference Terminology (SNOMED RT), developed by

2668-574: Is being revised to utilize SNOMED CT expression constraints. SNOMED CT is a clinical terminology designed to capture and represent patient data for clinical purposes. The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) is an internationally used medical classification system; which is used to assign diagnostic and, in some national modifications, procedural codes in order to produce coded data for statistical analysis, epidemiology, reimbursement and resource allocation. Both systems use standardized definitions and form

2760-518: Is no concept model yet defined. World Health Organization The World Health Organization ( WHO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for global public health . It is headquartered in Geneva , Switzerland, and has six regional offices and 150 field offices worldwide. Only sovereign States can participate, and it is the largest intergovernmental health organization at

2852-557: Is now on the verge of extinction, thanks to a Global Vaccination Drive. The World Health Organization (WHO) stated the eradication programme has saved millions from deadly disease. Between 1990 and 2010, WHO's help has contributed to a 40% decline in the number of deaths from tuberculosis, and since 2005, over 46 million people have been treated and an estimated 7 million lives saved through practices advocated by WHO. These include engaging national governments and their financing, early diagnosis, standardising treatment, monitoring of

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2944-451: Is that SNOMED CT takes on, in many cases, the functionality of information models, as the latter do not exist in a given implementation. With the establishment of IHTSDO, SNOMED CT became more accessible to a wider audience. Criticism of the state of the terminology was sparked by numerous substantive weaknesses as well as on the lack of quality assurance measures. From the beginning IHTSDO was open regarding such (also academic) criticism. In

3036-404: Is the trading name of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO), established in 2007. SNOMED CT provides for consistent information interchange and is fundamental to an interoperable electronic health record. It provides a consistent means to index, store, retrieve, and aggregate clinical data across specialties and sites of care. It also helps in organizing

3128-403: Is the use of rigorously typed upper-level ontologies to disambiguate SNOMED CT content. The increased take-up of SNOMED CT for research into applications in daily use across the world to support patient care is leading to a larger engaged community. This has led to an increase in the resource allocated to authoring SNOMED CT terms as well as to an increase in collaboration to take SNOMED CT into

3220-858: Is unique across all of SNOMED CT. It has, in addition, exactly one PT, which has been decided by a group of clinicians to be the most common way of expressing the meaning of the concept. It may have zero to many Synonyms. Synonyms are additional terms and phrases used to refer to this concept. They do not have to be unique or unambiguous. SNOMED CT assigns each concept a semantic tag. It is present in parentheses in Fully Specified Name of each concept. There can be multiple semantic tags used within each SNOMED CT top level hierarchy. For example, top level hierarchy of Pharmaceutical/biologic Product uses semantic tags of: product, medicinal product, medicinal product form and clinical drug. Only one semantic tag can be used for each concept. SNOMED CT can be characterized as

3312-666: Is used in a number of different ways, some of which are: More specifically, the following sample computer applications use SNOMED CT: SNOMED CT is maintained and distributed by SNOMED International, an international non-profit standards development organization, located in London, UK. The use of SNOMED CT in production systems requires a license. There are two types of license: For scientific research in medical informatics, for demonstrations or evaluation purposes SNOMED CT sources can be freely downloaded and used. The original SNOMED CT sources in tabular form are accessible by registered users of

3404-741: The College of American Pathologists (CAP); and the Clinical Terms Version 3 (CTV3) (formerly known as the Read codes ), developed by the National Health Service of the United Kingdom (NHS). The final product was released in January 2002. The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation now considers SNOMED CT to be a brand name rather than an acronym . Previously SNOMED

3496-473: The International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The agency's work began in earnest in 1951 after a significant infusion of financial and technical resources. The WHO's official mandate is to promote health and safety while helping the vulnerable worldwide. It provides technical assistance to countries, sets international health standards, collects data on global health issues, and serves as

3588-658: The National Library of Medicine (NLM), on behalf of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, entered into an agreement with the College of American Pathologists to make SNOMED CT available to U.S. users at no cost through the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language System UMLS Metathesaurus . The NLM negotiation team was led by Betsy Humphreys , and the contract provided NLM with

3680-565: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and smaller organizations. As of 2011 , it has been working to immunize young children and prevent the re-emergence of cases in countries declared "polio-free". In 2017, a study was conducted as to why Polio Vaccines may not be enough to eradicate the Virus & conduct new technology. Polio

3772-815: The USSR , called on the World Health Assembly to undertake a global initiative to eradicate smallpox, resulting in Resolution WHA11.54. 1965: The first report on diabetes mellitus and the creation of the International Agency for Research on Cancer . 1966: The WHO moved its headquarters from the Ariana wing at the Palace of Nations to a newly constructed headquarters elsewhere in Geneva. 1967: The WHO intensified

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3864-543: The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) who have signed an agreement. Numerous online and offline browsers are available. Those wishing to obtain a license for its use and to download SNOMED CT should contact their National Release Centre, links to which are provided on the IHTSDO website. To facilitate adoption of SNOMED CT and use of SNOMED CT in other standards, there are license free subsets. For example,

3956-533: The United Kingdom , the United States and Uruguay . The member countries provide the bulk of the institutional financing through payment of yearly member fees, which are based on gross national income. Members of IHTSDO can be either an agency of a national government or another body (such as a corporation or regional government agency) which has been endorsed by an appropriate national government authority within

4048-998: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank . 1975: The WHO launched the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical diseases (the TDR). Co-sponsored by UNICEF , UNDP, and the World Bank, it was established in response to a 1974 request from the WHA for an intensive effort to develop improved control of tropical diseases. The TDR's goals are, firstly, to support and coordinate international research into diagnosis, treatment and control of tropical diseases; and, secondly, to strengthen research capabilities within endemic countries. 1976: The WHA enacted

4140-572: The World Health Assembly finished on 24 July 1948, having secured a budget of US$ 5 million (then £1,250,000 ) for the 1949 year. G. Brock Chisholm was appointed director-general of the WHO, having served as executive secretary and a founding member during the planning stages, while Andrija Štampar was the assembly's first president. Its first priorities were to control the spread of malaria , tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections , and to improve maternal and child health , nutrition and environmental hygiene. Its first legislative act

4232-449: The GA). The GA is collectively charged with assuring that the purpose, objects and principles of the association are pursued and that the interests of IHTSDO are safeguarded. The GA appoints the management board (MB), which has overall responsibility for the management and direction of IHTSDO and has a duty to act in the best interests of the organization. The member countries are also represented by

4324-544: The Health Organization of the League of Nations. After World War II , the United Nations absorbed all the other health organizations, to form the WHO. During the 1945 United Nations Conference on International Organization, Szeming Sze , a delegate from China, conferred with Norwegian and Brazilian delegates on creating an international health organization under the auspices of the new United Nations. After failing to get

4416-655: The ISC, and included discussions of responses to yellow fever , brucellosis , leprosy , tuberculosis , and typhoid . In part as a result of the successes of the Conferences, the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau (1902), and the Office International d'Hygiène Publique or " International office of Public Hygiene " in english(1907) were soon founded. When the League of Nations was formed in 1920, it established

4508-557: The Member Forum and the Affiliate Forum. Advisory Groups, PGs and SIGs also communicate throughout the year via conference calls and manage messages and documents in a content management system (CMS). To support the implementation of SNOMED CT , a number of publications are produced by IHTSDO. These range from user guides to technical implementation guides as well as some educational materials and videos. Documents are available through

4600-592: The Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) in order to acquire the rights of SNOMED CT from the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and make the development of a global clinical language for healthcare an international, collaborative effort. IHTSDO governance is defined in the IHTSDO Articles of Association. The organization is headquartered in the United Kingdom (London). Since 2007

4692-501: The SNOMED CT concept 82272006 defines the class of all the individual disease instances that match the criteria for "common cold" (e.g., one patient may have "head cold" noted in their record, and another may have "Acute coryza"; both can be found as instances of "common cold"). The superclass (Is-A) Relation relates classes in terms of inclusion of their members. That is, all individual "cold-processes" are also included in all superclasses of

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4784-635: The United Nations together with the exchange of letters related thereto, and taking into account the respective co-ordinating responsibilities of both organizations, it is recognized by the World Health Organization that the International Atomic Energy Agency has the primary responsibility for encouraging, assisting and co-ordinating research and development and practical application of atomic energy for peaceful uses throughout

4876-480: The WHO over the organization's unwillingness to share the penicillin recipe. They would not return until 1956. 1950: A mass tuberculosis inoculation drive using the BCG vaccine gets under way. 1955: The malaria eradication programme was launched, although objectives were later modified. (In most areas, the programme goals became control instead of eradication.) 1958: Viktor Zhdanov , Deputy Minister of Health for

4968-590: The WHO was to report as to whether RTS,S /AS01, were a viable malaria vaccine . For the time being, insecticide -treated mosquito nets and insecticide sprays are used to prevent the spread of malaria, as are antimalarial drugs – particularly to vulnerable people such as pregnant women and young children. In 1988, WHO launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to eradicate polio . It has also been successful in helping to reduce cases by 99% since WHO partnered with Rotary International ,

5060-425: The WHO's role and priorities in public health, ranging from narrowing its mandate to strengthening its independence and authority. During the 1970s, WHO had dropped its commitment to a global malaria eradication campaign as too ambitious, it retained a strong commitment to malaria control. WHO's Global Malaria Programme works to keep track of malaria cases, and future problems in malaria control schemes. As of 2012,

5152-498: The World Health Organization was signed by all 51 countries of the United Nations, and by 10 other countries, on 22 July 1946. It thus became the first specialized agency of the United Nations to which every member subscribed. Its constitution formally came into force on the first World Health Day on 7 April 1948, when it was ratified by the 26th member state. The WHO formally began its work in September 1, 1948. The first meeting of

5244-523: The aggregation and retrieval of pathology health care data recorded by multiple organizations and individuals. The strength of CTV3 was its terminologies for general practice. CTV3, with 200,000 interrelated concepts, was used for storing structured information about primary care encounters in individual, patient-based records. The January 2020 release of the SNOMED CT International Edition included more than 350,000 concepts. In July 2003,

5336-565: The basis for global prevention, treatment, and support the plan to fight the AIDS pandemic . 2006: The WHO launches the Global action plan for influenza vaccines 2016: The Global action plan for influenza vaccines ends with a report which concludes that while substantial progress has been made over the 10 years of the Plan, the world is still not ready to respond to an influenza pandemic. 2016: Following

5428-424: The budget and activities. The WHO is funded primarily by contributions from member states (both assessed and voluntary), followed by private donors. Its total approved budget for 2020–2021 is over $ 7.2 billion, while the approved budget for 2022–2023 is over $ 6.2 billion. The budget is $ 6.83 billion for 2024–2025. The International Sanitary Conferences (ISC), the first of which was held on 23 June 1851, were

5520-401: The class Common Cold, such as Viral upper respiratory tract infection (Figure). SNOMED CT's relational statements are basically triplets of the form Concept 1 – Relation x – Concept 2 , with Relation x being from a small number of relation types (called linkage concepts), e.g. finding site , due to , etc. The interpretation of these triplets is (implicitly) based on the semantics of

5612-415: The compositional syntax it can be represented as Such expressions are said to have been 'postcoordinated'. Post-coordination avoids the need to create large numbers of defined Concepts within SNOMED CT. However, many systems only allow for precoordinated representations. Reliable analysis and comparison of post-coordinated expressions is possible using appropriate algorithms machinery to efficiently process

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5704-567: The content of electronic health records systems by reducing the variability in the way data are captured, encoded and used for clinical care of patients and research. SNOMED CT can be used to directly record clinical details of individuals in electronic patient records. It also provides the user with a number of linkages to clinical care pathways, shared care plans and other knowledge resources, in order to facilitate informed decision-making, and to support long-term patient care. The availability of free automatic coding tools and services, which can return

5796-611: The continuing effects of nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima . They believe WHO must regain what they see as independence. Independent WHO held a weekly vigil from 2007 to 2017 in front of WHO headquarters. However, as pointed out by Foreman in clause 2 it states: In particular, and in accordance with the Constitution of the World Health Organization and the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its agreement with

5888-488: The country it represents. Member countries commit themselves to the dissemination of the IHTSDO terminologies within their jurisdiction, including where appropriate the creation of local translations, extensions, and mappings. The general assembly (GA) is the organization's highest authority and is composed of representatives from all member countries with equal representation (although some member countries have not selected GA representatives and therefore are not represented in

5980-451: The expression taking account of the underlying description logic. Major Electronic Health Record Systems (EHRS) have repeatedly complained to IHTSDO and other standards organizations about the "complexity" of post-coordinated expressions. For example, the postcoordinated expression above can be transformed using a set of standard rules to the following "normal form expression" which enables comparison with similar concepts. Postcoordination

6072-586: The fiftieth anniversary of WHO's founding. He, did, however, accept that more had to be done to assist maternal health and that progress in this area had been slow. 2000: The Stop TB Partnership was created along with the UN's formulation of the Millennium Development Goals . 2001: The measles initiative was formed, and credited with reducing global deaths from the disease by 68% by 2007. 2002: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

6164-449: The global smallpox eradication campaign by contributing $ 2.4 million annually to the effort and adopted a new disease surveillance method, at a time when 2 million people were dying from smallpox per year. The initial problem the WHO team faced was inadequate reporting of smallpox cases. WHO established a network of consultants who assisted countries in setting up surveillance and containment activities. The WHO also helped contain

6256-399: The international level. The WHO's purpose is to achieve the highest possible level of health for all the world's people, defining health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." The main functions of the World Health Organization include: to promote the control of epidemic and endemic diseases; to provide and improve

6348-526: The last European outbreak in Yugoslavia in 1972 . After over two decades of fighting smallpox, a Global Commission declared in 1979 that the disease had been eradicated – the first disease in history to be eliminated by human effort. 1974: The Expanded Programme on Immunization and the control programme of onchocerciasis was started, an important partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),

6440-450: The last few years considerable progress has been made regarding quality assurance and tooling. The need for a more principled ontological foundation was gradually accepted, as well as a better understanding of description logic semantics. Redesign priorities were formulated regarding observables, disorders, findings, substances, organisms etc. Translation guidelines were elaborated as well as guidelines for content submission requests and

6532-449: The late 20th century, the rise of new actors engaged in global health—such as the World Bank , the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief ( PEPFAR ) and dozens of public-private partnerships for global health—have weakened the WHO's role as a coordinator and policy leader in the field; subsequently, there are various proposals to reform or reorient

6624-416: The member forum, which provides input on member priorities and helps develop the IHTSDO plan of work. The organization is structured into four major areas: customer relations, operations, products & services, and strategy. Seven advisory groups provide advice to the management team. In addition there are topic-specific project groups (PGs) and special interest groups (SIGs) which supplement and report to

6716-477: The monitoring of public health risks, coordinating responses to health emergencies, and promoting health and well-being generally. The WHO is governed by the World Health Assembly (WHA), which is composed of its 194 member states. The WHA elects and advises an executive board made up of 34 health specialists; selects the WHO's chief administrator, the director-general (currently Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia ); sets goals and priorities; and approves

6808-402: The number of member countries has increased from 9 to 29. The members were (as of December 2016): Australia , Belgium , Brunei , Canada , Chile , Czech Republic , Denmark , Estonia , Hong Kong , Iceland , India , Ireland , Israel , Lithuania , Malaysia , Malta , Netherlands , New Zealand , Poland , Portugal , Singapore , Slovakia , Slovenia , Spain , Sweden , Switzerland ,

6900-470: The other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement. The nature of this statement has led some groups and activists including Women in Europe for a Common Future to claim that the WHO is restricted in its ability to investigate the effects on human health of radiation caused by the use of nuclear power and

6992-546: The perceived failure of the response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak , the World Health Emergencies programme was formed, changing the WHO from just being a "normative" agency to one that responds operationally to health emergencies. 2020: the World Health Organization announced that it had classified the novel coronavirus outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern. The novel coronavirus

7084-535: The public website, but some items such as the videos can be found via YouTube. Member countries also contribute to the public domain and documents, which can often be found on individual member country websites; a link to these is provided on the IHTSDO webpages. The IHTSDO head office is located at 1 Kingdom Street, London, UK W6 6BD. SNOMED CT SNOMED CT is maintained and distributed by SNOMED International, an international non-profit standards development organization, located in London, UK. SNOMED International

7176-458: The standing committees. These groups are open and are not elected. IHTSDO PGs and SIGs include: IHTSDO's work is documented on its website. The internal communication is supported by a Collaborative content management system. The broad vision for IHTSDO is set out in their Articles of Association. In 2015, the General Assembly and the management board agreed that the organization's focus for

7268-647: The subsequent 5 years would be (1) demonstrate successful large scale implementations of SNOMED CT (2) remove barriers to adoption for customers and stakeholders, (3) enable continuous development of our product to meet customer requirements, (4) provide scalable products and services that drive SNOMED CT adoption, and (5) set new trends and shape new technologies that increase the overall use of SNOMED CT . IHTSDO aims to achieve interoperability and harmonization between its terminology products and those standards produced by other international standards development organisations (SDOs). In support of this IHTSDO has negotiated

7360-417: The system. Because of these omissions and actual or possible redundancies of semantic content, real-world performance of algorithms to infer subsumption or semantic equivalence will be unpredictably imperfect. Using consistent rules is important for the quality of SNOMED CT. To that end, in 2009, a prototype Machine Readable Concept Model (MRCM) was created by the SNOMED CT team. In a follow-up work, this model

7452-511: The task of an information model. Human language is misleading here, as we use syntactically similar expression to represent categorically distinct entities, e.g. Ectopic pregnancy vs. Suspected pregnancy . The first one refers to a real pregnancy, the second one to a piece of (uncertain) information . In SNOMED CT most (but not all) of these context-dependent concepts are concentrated in the subhierachy Situation with explicit context . A major reason for why such concepts cannot be dispensed with

7544-528: The teaching and training in public health, the medical treatment of disease and related matters; and to promote the establishment of international standards for biological products. The WHO was established on April 7, 1948, and formally began its work on September 1, 1948. It incorporated the assets, personnel, and duties of the League of Nations ' Health Organization and the Paris-based Office International d'Hygiène Publique , including

7636-494: The things that characterize healthcare processes and need to be recorded therein. In 2011, SNOMED CT included more than 311,000 concepts, which are uniquely identified by a concept ID, e.g. the concept 22298006 refers to Myocardial infarction . All SNOMED CT concepts are organized into acyclic taxonomic (is-a) hierarchies; for example, Viral pneumonia IS-A Infectious pneumonia IS-A Pneumonia IS-A Lung disease . Concepts may have multiple parents, for example Infectious pneumonia

7728-488: The world without prejudice to the right of the World Health Organization to concern itself with promoting, developing, assisting and co-ordinating international health work, including research, in all its aspects. The key text is highlighted in bold, the agreement in clause 2 states that the WHO is free to perform any health-related work. 1947: The WHO established an epidemiological information service via telex . 1949: The Soviet Union and its constituent republics quit

7820-500: Was a new strain of coronavirus that had never been detected in humans before. The WHO named this new coronavirus " COVID-19 " or "2019-nCov". 2022: The WHO suggests formation of a Global Health Emergency Council, with a new global health emergency workforce, and recommends revision of the International Health Regulations. 2024: WHO has declared the spread of mpox (formerly monkeypox) in several African countries

7912-407: Was an acronym of Systematized Nomenclature Of Medicine, but it lost that meaning when SNOMED was combined with CTV3 (Clinical Terms Version 3) into the merged product called SNOMED Clinical Terms, which was shortened to SNOMED CT. The historical strength of SNOMED was its coverage of medical specialties. SNOMED RT, with over 120,000 concepts, was designed to serve as a common reference terminology for

8004-526: Was concerning the compilation of accurate statistics on the spread and morbidity of disease. The logo of the World Health Organization features the Rod of Asclepius as a symbol for healing. In 1959, the WHO signed Agreement WHA 12–40 with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which says: whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which

8096-469: Was difficult to reach. Seven of these international conferences, spanning 41 years, were convened before any resulted in a multi-state international agreement. The seventh conference, in Venice in 1892, finally resulted in a convention. It was concerned only with the sanitary control of shipping traversing the Suez Canal , and was an effort to guard against importation of cholera. Five years later, in 1897,

8188-416: Was drawn up to improve the resources available. 2005: The WHO revises International Health Regulations (IHR) in light of emerging health threats and the experience of the 2002/3 SARS epidemic , authorizing WHO, among other things, to declare a health threat a Public Health Emergency of International Concern . 2006: The WHO endorsed the world's first official HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe, which formed

8280-698: Was formed. 1988: The Global Polio Eradication Initiative was established. 1995: The WHO established an independent International Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication (Guinea worm disease eradication; ICCDE). The ICCDE recommends to the WHO which countries fulfil requirements for certification. It also has role in advising on progress made towards elimination of transmission and processes for verification. 1998: The WHO's director-general highlighted gains in child survival, reduced infant mortality , increased life expectancy and reduced rates of "scourges" such as smallpox and polio on

8372-418: Was perceived as a user-unfriendly obstacle, which has certainly contributed to the rather low adoption of early SNOMED versions. On the other hand, uniform coding was difficult to obtain. E.g., Acute appendicitis could be post-coordinated in three different ways with no means to compute semantic equivalences. SNOMED RT had addressed this problem by introducing description logic formula. With the addition of CTV3

8464-419: Was sometimes pushed to extremes, so there are, for example, 350 different concepts for burns found on the head. A further phenomenon which characterizes parts of SNOMED CT is the so-called epistemic intrusion . In principle, the task of terminology (and even an ontology ) should be limited to providing context-free term or class meanings. The contextualization of these representational units should be ideally

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