SNOMED International and Syadem are pleased to announce the release of the Unified Nomenclature of Vaccines (NUVA) Extension.
France-based Syadem owns and manages NUVA, a terminology used to capture, interpret, and process records of administered vaccines.
SNOMED CT is a comprehensive, multilingual healthcare terminology created for use by healthcare professionals. It enables the care of individuals to be captured in electronic health records, facilitating information sharing, decision support and analytics for safe and effective health information exchange.
SYADEM participates in the European Vaccination beyond COVID (EUVABECO) project, which is co-funded by the European Commission under the eU4Health program. By mid 2026, EUVABECO will deliver implementation plans for innovative vaccination practices to EU Member States. The plans will support the operationalization of several tools including a portable European Vaccination Card (EVC). NUVA is the intended code system for documenting administered vaccines in the EVC.
The release follows the April 2024 announcement of the formal collaboration between the two organizations, which was formed to facilitate the creation of comprehensive vaccination histories for individuals over time, regardless of the original vaccine source and data format. The partners also agreed to collaborate to integrate NUVA content as an extension in SNOMED International’s Community Content Area, define processes for ensuring content alignment, and, where relevant, include NUVA concepts in the SNOMED CT International Edition.
The NUVA Extension includes all of the NUVA vaccine content, including branded products, valences and medicinal product role. It facilitates alignment with, and strengthens access to, vaccine content in a SNOMED CT format, supporting both clinical and regulatory requirements for vaccine information.
“Team members from both organizations have made considerable progress in achieving the goals we agreed upon a year ago,” says SNOMED International CEO Don Sweete. “As we watch a growing measles crisis unfold in North America and bird flu continue to spread, we see that the risks to human health from vaccine-preventable illnesses have not diminished in that time, and in fact, continue to increase. Our work together helps ensure the world can respond more quickly and effectively to these ongoing challenges.”
“Three years ago, we realized how helpful our NUVA terminology could be to the digital health community and made the decision to offer it as a global common good,” says SYADEM scientific director Jean-Louis Koeck. “SNOMED International immediately grasped the value of that idea and helped us in maturing this solution. Now, with this first release and the constitution of a supporting network of vaccine coding experts through the International Vaccine Codes Initiative (IVC), it becomes a reality.”
International Summit on Vaccine Coding & Standards Conference
The SNOMED International team participating in the NUVA collaboration work are attending the International Summit on Vaccine Coding & Standards Conference on May 9, 2025, in Bordeaux, France, where the release will be formally announced. Co-organized by the American Immunization Registry Association and Syadem, the event will focus on advancing global vaccine interoperability through the International Vaccine Codes Initiative (IVC) and NUVA. The teams will also provide technical information about the NUVA Extension and alignment with SNOMED CT, and discuss the importance and benefits of the collaboration between the two organizations. For more information about the conference, visit the conference website.
View the NUVA extension here.
Media Inquiries:
SYADEM
Timothée Bahuaud
Email: tbahuaud@mesvaccins.net
SNOMED International
Kelly Kuru
Email: comms@snomed.org