The Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare is the representative of Spain for SNOMED International and, specifically, the General Vice-Directorate of Healthcare Information within the General Direction of Public Health, Quality and Innovation is the responsible for undertaking initiatives aimed to develop SNOMED CT as Spain's reference clinical terminology.

The Electronic Health Record is widely spread in Spain but it has become necessary to use standards to allow semantic interoperability between the different systems in order to provide the citizens and professionals with access to relevant clinical information at any point.

One of the first goals defined through the semantic interoperability roadmap was the adoption of SNOMED CT as the controlled clinical vocabulary to allow the automatic interpretation of the content transmitted between heterogeneous systems in an accurate way and in different languages.

As a SNOMED International Member, the Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare assumes the responsibility of the distribution of SNOMED CT within Spain and the development of the national version, adapted to our specific needs.

The strategic guidelines continue to focus on the continuous improvement of the quality of the products that are already distributed, implementation of the full set of functions of the NRC, as well as continuity of collaboration with the quality processes of the Spanish Edition.

More information about SNOMED CT in Spain can be accessed here: http://www.mscbs.gob.es