UNITED KINGDOM – (January 29, 2026) – SNOMED International and the Global Medical Device Nomenclature (GMDN) Agency have announced a new collaboration aimed at strengthening the connection between clinical and regulatory medical device data to support safer, more efficient, and more interoperable health systems worldwide.
The collaboration brings together SNOMED International, the steward of SNOMED CT, the world’s leading clinical terminology, and the GMDN Agency, a registered UK charity and non-profit organization responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the Global Medical Device Nomenclature (GMDN) - the internationally recognized standard for the naming, classification and categorisation of medical devices in regulatory, supply chain, and post-market environments. Together, the organizations will work to enable a more unified and practical approach to using clinical and regulatory device information across the lifecycle of care.
Under the agreement, the organizations will jointly develop and maintain a GMDN–SNOMED CT Extension, replacing the existing SNOMED CT–GMDN linkage table with a more robust, sustainable, and interoperable solution. The Extension is designed to improve medical device content coverage, quality, and usability while supporting harmonized implementation across health systems, regulators, and industry. It will enable implementers to use the two standards together more easily, offering flexibility in coding choices while reducing duplication and complexity.
“This collaboration is fundamentally about improving how medical device information flows across care delivery, regulation, and oversight,” said SNOMED International CEO Don Sweete. “By strengthening the relationship between SNOMED CT and GMDN, we are helping bridge long-standing gaps between clinical systems and regulatory processes, enabling data captured at the point of care to better support safety monitoring, reporting, and learning at scale.”
The agreement is driven by a shared recognition that health systems increasingly need to bridge the gap between clinical and regulatory medical device data. Stakeholders across care delivery, regulation, and industry require consistent device identification that supports clinical documentation while also enabling regulatory reporting, post-market surveillance, traceability, procurement, and inventory management. The existing separation between clinical terminology and regulatory nomenclature has limited data reuse and interoperability, creating a clear need for a more aligned approach.
Deniz Bruce, CEO of the GMDN Agency, said: “This collaboration marks an important step forward in strengthening how medical device information is used across global health systems to support interoperability. By working closely with SNOMED International, we are ensuring that clinical and regulatory communities can rely on a more aligned, high‑quality source of device data. Our shared goal is to make it easier for healthcare providers, regulators, and industry to work from the same, consistent information—supporting better patient safety, improved traceability, and more effective post‑market surveillance worldwide.”
The collaboration formalizes joint governance, quality oversight, and communications between the two organizations and includes a shared work plan focused on stakeholder engagement, testing with real-world use cases, and the development of guidance to support consistent implementation across settings. The emphasis of the work is on enabling practical, real-world interoperability rather than introducing additional complexity for users.
This initiative also reflects a broader shared commitment to global alignment in health data standards. Both SNOMED International and the GMDN Agency are members of the Joint Initiative Council for Global Health Standardization, where international standards organizations collaborate to reduce fragmentation and advance interoperability across clinical, regulatory, and administrative domains. The collaboration demonstrates how that shared vision can be translated into concrete solutions that support patients, providers, regulators, and industry alike.
SNOMED International and the GMDN Agency will continue to engage their respective communities as the collaboration progresses, sharing updates and opportunities for involvement as milestones are reached.
To learn more about the collaboration, visit https://www.gmdnagency.org/
About the GMDN Agency
The GMDN Agency is a registered UK charity and non-profit organisation responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the GMDN database.
The Agency was established to provide health authorities and regulators, healthcare providers, manufacturers and others with a system that allows an exchange of medical device information and supports patient safety.
About GMDN
The Global Medical Device Nomenclature (GMDN) is the leading global standard for the naming, classification and categorisation of medical devices. Anyone can register for free as a member on the GMDN website to access and use any GMDN Term.
Our nomenclature provides Healthcare Professionals, Regulators, Manufacturers and others with a common language to communicate and share information.
GMDN enables safer and more effective patient care, fosters innovation and collaboration in the medical device industry, and supports global harmonisation of regulatory requirements.
The GMDN is designed to be flexible and adaptable to accommodate new and emerging technologies, and it is continually updated to reflect changes in the medical device landscape. The system is used by Regulators in nearly 70 countries worldwide and has members in around 140 countries across the globe. It has become a critical component of the global regulatory infrastructure for medical devices.
The full GMDN is available for free to Regulators, Healthcare Providers and Academic Researchers.
About SNOMED International
SNOMED International is an international not-for-profit organisation that develops and promotes the use of SNOMED CT®, a comprehensive, multilingual healthcare terminology created for use by healthcare professionals to capture the care of individuals in an electronic health record and facilitate sharing, decision support and analytics, to support safe and effective health information exchange. The purpose of SNOMED International is to develop, maintain, promote and enable the uptake and correct use of its terminology products in health systems, services and products around the world.
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