SNOMED - Governance and Advisory

Each Member is entitled to be represented by an individual in SNOMED International’s General Assembly. The General Assembly is the highest authority of the organization and can make binding decisions regarding all matters. Members play a critical governance role through the approval of the organization's budget and strategy.

The Management Board has overall responsibility for the management and direction of SNOMED International. The Management Board, and each Director individually, has a duty to act in a manner which they reasonably believes is in the best interests of the Association. Though elected by the General Assembly, Management Board Directors do not represent their countries.

Advisory

Member Forum

The Member Forum is an advisory body to the organization, whose role is to facilitate collaboration and cooperation between the Members, provide Member priorities for all new and proposed SNOMED International projects and products, and promote learning from shared experiences. It promotes consultation and communication at an operational level between SNOMED International and Members.

Member Forum representatives will ideally be knowledgeable about all operational and business aspects of the Member’s national release center and have open communications channels with their General Assembly Representative. Structurally, the Member Forum advises the Management Board, but it also has strong ties to the working levels of the organization.

Member information

Advisory Groups

Advisory Groups (AGs) conduct specific activities that contribute to the fulfillment of the Management Team’s responsibilities and the organization’s mandate. The AGs are chaired by Management Team members and are agile in nature, given the changing needs and direction of the organization.

More information

Vendor Liaison Forum

The Vendor Liaison Forum also advises the Management Board and allows vendors to provide input into SNOMED CT development, release and implementation.

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Articles of association

Arrangements for governance of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (trading as SNOMED International) and SNOMED CT are specified in the IHTSDO Articles of Association.

Articles of association

General Assembly

The General Assembly is SNOMED International's highest authority. The General Assembly ensures that the purpose, objects and principles of the Association are pursued and that the interests of the organization are safeguarded. The General Assembly can make binding decisions regarding all matters relating to SNOMED International, subject to and in accordance with the provisions of the Articles.

General Assembly

Fernando Gabriel Nuñez	Argentina
Steven Issa	Australia
Stefan Sabutsch	Austria
Tom Van Renterghem	Belgium
TBD	Brunei
Michael Green	Canada
Rodrigo Martinez	Chile
Vasos Scoutellas	Cyprus
Irena Rubešová	Czech Republic
Marianne Holdt	Denmark
Kerli Linna	Estonia
Juha Mykkänen	Finland
TBA	Germany
Vicky Fung	Hong Kong, China
Guðrún Auður Harðardóttir	Iceland
Lav Argarwal	India
Niall Sinnott	Ireland
Boaz Lev	Israel
Feras Kamal	Jordan
Beibut Esenbaev	Kazakhstan
Martynas Bieliauskas	Lithuania
Raffaella Vaccaroli	Luxembourg
Md Khadzir Sheikh Ahmad	Malaysia
Hugo Agius-Muscat	Malta
Herko Coomans	Netherlands
Alastair Kenworthy	New Zealand
Alfhild Stokke (VICE CHAIR)	Norway
TBD	Portugal
Anahit Avanesyan	Republic of Armenia
Jung, Jip Min	Republic of Korea
TBD	Republic of Slovenia
Hashem Abubaker	Saudi Arabia
Priscilla Chua	Singapore
Pavol Rieger	Slovak Republic
Belén Crespo Sánchez-Eznarriaga	Spain
Tom Nilstierna	Sweden
Adrian Schmid	Switzerland
Alex Elias (CHAIR)	United Kingdom
Vivian Auld	United States
Pablo Orefice	Uruguay

General Assembly Minutes

Meeting minutes from Open General Assembly proceedings:

Management Board

The Management Board has overall responsibility for the management and direction of SNOMED International. The Management Board, and each Director individually, has a duty to act in a manner which they reasonably believe is in the best interests of the organization and is consistent with the pursuit and the protection of our purpose, objects and principles.

Joanne Burns, Chair

Joanne Burns has held leadership roles with Cerner, the Tiger Institute for Health Innovation and Stanford University Medical Center. Ms. Burns has extensive experience setting up and leading governance boards and received Program Certification in “Women on Boards” from the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health in 2016.

Joanne has served as a Management Board Director to SNOMED International since April 2017 and was appointed Management Board Chair in September 2020.

Hadas Bitran

Hadas Bitran, Tel Aviv-based founder and head of Microsoft Healthcare Israel, brings to SNOMED International’s MB considerable expertise in the area of building AI technologies and products for health and life sciences, including language services, natural language processing, personal health assistant technologies and machine learning based solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Hadas held senior leadership positions at SAP after managing R&D and product teams in start-up companies. She received her BSc degree in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University, and her MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in Chicago.

Isabelle de Zegher

Dr. Isabelle de Zegher, previously Vice President, Integrated Solutions, at Parexel Informatics, recently left her corporate career to found a start-up that is developing an AI-based solution empowering individuals to curate their personal data. Dr. de Zegher offers extensive board and advisory experience across a variety of EU initiatives, including with the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry. A member of the Health Level Seven (HL7) Technical Committee for nearly a decade, Dr. de Zegher also serves on the Board of Directors of CDISC, the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium, a standards development organization seeking to create clarity in the clinical research domain.

Michael Lewis

Professor Michael Lewis, has 30 years global health industry experience, and among other roles, is currently Chair of five medical and contract research organizations as well as digital health companies. Professor Lewis has previously held a series of senior roles at various European companies focused on pharma, biotech, digital, dental, devices and diagnostics. Professor Lewis is also a frequent speaker at conferences and events on digital health-focused topics such as mental health, investment and innovation.

Matic Meglic

Dr. Meglic is the Head of Customer Solutions Europe, Novartis Pharma. Dr. Meglic has been a contributor to EU public health informatics as CIO, Slovene National Institute of Public Health and coordinator of the key EU ePublicHealth policy project PARENT. Dr. Meglic has also served as Co-chair of epSOS Steering Board and actively contributed to a number of other EU semantic interoperability initiatives.

Gong Mengchun

Dr. Gong joined the area of applied medical informatics since 2015 and now works as the Distinguished Professor in the Institute of Health Management, Southern Medical University, China. Dr. Gong took charge of the National Rare Diseases Registry System of China (www.nrdrs.org.cn) as the executive director from 2016 to 2019, and has been a pioneer in rare disease research and patient advocacy in China. His research focus covers medical terminology/ontology, precision medical informatics, rare diseases and orphan drugs development and health technology assessment (HTA). He is actively engaged with international academic societies and holds the positions including the Diagnostic Science Committee member of IRDiRC (www.irdirc.org) , the Member-at-Large of the Global Health Informatics Workgroup of AMIA (www.amia.org), the Medical Informatics Consultant of the National Children’s Care Center/Fudan University Children’s Hospital and the member of the executive committee of the Chinese Association of Bioinformatics.

Andrew Roddam

Dr Andrew Roddam is currently the CEO of the UK Early Disease Detection Research Project. An internationally renowned epidemiologist, Andrew has held a wide range of roles across both academia and the pharmaceutical industry, principally focused on the application of epidemiological methods to advance the understanding of human disease. He has a strong interest in health informatics and is an experienced board member within the UK and internationally who regularly participates at international meetings and conferences as a keynote speaker.

Member Forum

The Member Forum acts as an advisory body to SNOMED International and optimizes collaboration and coordination among Member countries. It is co-chaired by an elected representative of the Member Forum along with a co-chair from SNOMED International.

Member Forum Representatives

Karina Revirol and Guillermo Reynoso	Argentina
Elizabeth Donohoo and Matt Cordell	Australia
Stefan Sabutsch and Stephan Rainer-Sablatnig	Austria
Katrien Scheerlinck and Ingrid Mertens	Belgium
TBA	Brunei
Linda Parisien and Andrea MacLean	Canada
TBA	Chile
Vasos Scoutellas	Cyprus
Irena Rubešová and Miroslav Zvolský	Czech Republic
Camilla Wiberg Danielsen	Denmark
Krista Kärt and Rutt Lindström	Estonia
Jonna Salonen and Mikko Härkönen	Finland
TBA	Germany
Vicky Fung	Hong Kong, China
Gudrun Audur Hardardottir and Ingi Steinar Ingason	Iceland
Gaur Sunder and Manisha Mantri	India
Theresa Barry	Ireland
Yael Applbaum	Israel
Afnan Jebril	Jordan
Zhanat Satanova and Zhanar Tyulyubayeva	Kazakhstan
Martynas Bieliauskas and Kristina Dienine	Lithuania
Olivier Lepanto	Luxembourg
'Ismat Binti Mohd Sulaiman and Muhammad Naufal Bin Nordin	Malaysia
Hugo Agius-Muscat	Malta
Pim Volkert and Elze de Groot	Netherlands
Alastair Kenworthy (co-chair) and Tracy Thompson	New Zealand
Jostein Ven and Jørn Andre Jørgensen	Norway
Diogo Martins and Filipe Mealha	Portugal
Ruzanna Movsisyan and Kristina Sargsyan	Republic of Armenia
Park, Hyeoun-Ae and Hwang, Hee	Republic of Korea
Alen Vrecko	Republic of Slovenia
Tariq Hakeem	Saudi Arabia
Adele Lee and Wong Jing Jing	Singapore
Monika Geletová and Eva Sabajová	Slovak Republic
Francisco José Sánchez Laguna and Jorge Rangil López	Spain
Lotti Barlow and Daniel Karlsson	Sweden
Pero Grgic	Switzerland
Emma Melhuish	United Kingdom
Vivian Auld and Patrick McLaughlin	United States
Rossana Occhiuzzi and Betania Arispe	Uruguay