The International Patient Summary (IPS) is an electronic health record extract containing essential healthcare information for use in the unscheduled, cross-border care scenario, as well as for local, regional and other care scenarios. It is a standardized set of basic clinical data that includes the most important health and care related facts required to ensure safe and secure healthcare.

This minimal and non-exhaustive set of data elements have been defined by ISO/EN 17269 and delivered by HL7 in both CDA and FHIR using a curated set of SNOMED CT terms.

Unlike SNOMED International’s Global Patient Set which is a flat list of SNOMED CT codes and terms, the IPS Terminology will provide implementers with an open product that can be used in healthcare solutions using the power of SNOMED CT through its query language and hierarchies for the specified scope. Use of the IPS Terminology will allow for more effective use of clinical data analytics and decision support, and for Artificial Intelligence applications.

Continuing to act in the spirit of the IPS Free Set, SNOMED International committed to create and release an openly available IPS Terminology in the first half of 2022 to enhance the existing cross border movement of information, and ultimately health system interoperability. 

Released in its beta version for focused stakeholder testing and feedback, the IPS Terminology will be accompanied by a User Guide to aid implementers in non-Member regions in their understanding of the features, capabilities, and limitations of the IPS Terminology package.

On November 30, 2022, The organization issued the first production release of SNOMED International’s IPS Terminology that adds the hierarchy, defining relationships and extra synonyms from the SNOMED CT International Edition to form a sub-ontology of SNOMED CT that can be loaded into a terminology server for the specified scope of the IPS.
 

The following IPS resources have been made available. SNOMED International will continue to add to this collection as this initiative moves forward.