Technical Notes
NLM® Becomes Charter Member of New International SNOMED SDO®
NLM® Becomes Charter Member of New International SNOMED SDO®
On April 26, 2007, Mike Leavitt, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), [link removed] announced that HHS is one of nine charter members of the new International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO® or SNOMED SDO), which has acquired SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT®) from the College of American Pathologists (CAP). NLM represents HHS and the U.S. in the new organization and will continue to distribute SNOMED CT through its Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS®) Metathesaurus®. NLM will also make SNOMED CT available in its native format as required by the IHTSDO. Uniform international license terms for SNOMED CT will replace the U.S.-wide license terms NLM negotiated with the CAP in 2003, giving U.S. users broader rights to distribute derivative products internationally. The new license terms have been incorporated into the License for Use of the UMLS Metathesaurus. Existing UMLS licensees MUST review and accept the revised UMLS license online by May 15, 2007 in order to retain uninterrupted access to the UMLS Knowledge Source Server and related resources. Obtaining a UMLS license provides access to the UMLS Metathesaurus and other vocabulary resources including SNOMED CT files in their native format (effective May 15, 2007), RxNorm files in their native format, mapping files, UMLS-enriched subsets of specific vocabularies, etc.
