Global Patient Set

The GPS supports health information interoperability across care settings, systems, organizations and national borders.

What is the GPS?

The GPS is an open, and freely accessible collection of SNOMED CT terms that represent the breadth of the content in the SNOMED CT International Edition to better support core health data exchange, public health reporting, research, and more.

GPS offers global access to all SNOMED CT unique identifiers, fully specified names (FSNs), preferred terms in international English, and active/inactive indicators — made available at no cost to users.

The GPS does not include SNOMED CT’s relationships, hierarchies and remaining descriptions.

GPS resources

The GPS Implementation Guide provides practical implementation guidance for organizations adopting the GPS. It describes how systems can receive SNOMED CT identifiers (for example through HL7 FHIR data structures), treat them as opaque codes, store them alongside the relevant GPS version, and perform basic validation checks. It also outlines governance and operational considerations, including release management, handling inactive concepts, and maintaining locally defined value sets where limited data entry is required.

Access the GPS Implementation Guide here.

The GPS is produced by SNOMED International under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Additional information about this license specific to SNOMED International’s release of the GPS:

SNOMED CT is © and ® SNOMED International. The right to maintain the GPS remains vested exclusively in SNOMED International.
The Licensee can redistribute the GPS.
The Licensee can create derivatives or implementation-related products and services based on the GPS.
The Licensee cannot claim that SNOMED International or any of its Members endorses the Licensee’s derivative because it uses content from the GPS.
Neither SNOMED International nor any of the contributors accept any liability for the Licensee’s use or redistribution of the GPS.
SNOMED CT® was originally created by the College of American Pathologists.

Please review all terms and conditions of use here.

March 11, 2026

SNOMED International significantly expands the scope of the Global Patient Set

September 30, 2021

Third annual GPS release offers more content and greater utility than ever

December 18, 2020

SNOMED International's GPS broadens its global reach

September 30, 2020

Broadening patient care and interoperablity with the second release of the GPS

March 12, 2020

SNOMED CT content added to the Global Patient Set

September 3, 2019

A view into SNOMED CT’s globally recognized clinical terminology with the release of SNOMED International’s Global Patient Set

April 19, 2019

Navigating International Patient Care and Interoperability

About the GPS

The GPS is an initiative from SNOMED International designed to support the global exchange and use of clinical information encoded with SNOMED CT identifiers. The GPS enables healthcare systems in both SNOMED CT Member and non-Member countries to share, store, and display SNOMED CT–coded data without requiring access to the full SNOMED CT terminology or a licensing agreement.

Its primary goal is to improve international interoperability and continuity of care, particularly in cross-border healthcare, global health programmes, and environments where SNOMED CT licensing is not available.

GPS Implementation Guide

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Licensed Use

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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