SNOMED CT

The Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms, the general clinical terminology.¹ In OIDM it is a secondary coding system rather than a primary key. It appears in three places: as an index code system on finding models, attributes, and attribute values, listed alongside RadLex and Gamuts as one of the common ontologies;² as a cross-reference on anatomic locations, present on 1,732 of the 2,890 records in the curated set;³ and in the FHIR lineage samples as the code system for a report’s category and its conclusion codes.⁴

Typical use on a value is the qualifier hierarchy, for example 52101004 for Present and 2667000 for Absent, paired with the equivalent RadLex codes on the same value.

Synonyms and near-synonyms

• SNOMED and SNOMED-CT are the same terminology; source documents use all three spellings.
• SNOMED is the system string in a finding model index code, while SNOMEDCT and SNOMEDCT_US are the BioPortal and UMLS source abbreviations used by the lookup tooling.⁵
• snomedId and snomedDisplay are field names in the raw anatomic location export.

Identifier form

A numeric concept identifier, for example 23043003 for uterine adnexa.

Where it is used

Ontologies used, Data model, and med-ontology-lookup.

Conflicts

SNOMED CT is licensed, which is why the lookup tooling treats it as a credentialed backend and keeps licensed behavior opt-in and visible rather than implicit.⁵ The curated anatomic set also records “complete SNOMED identification” as unfinished roadmap work, so SNOMED coverage of anatomic locations is partial by design.

Footnotes

1. SNOMED International ↩

2. findingmodels repository conventions ↩

3. anatomiclocations.org data file description ↩

4. Lung screening DiagnosticReport ↩

5. med-ontology-lookup README ↩ ↩²