Country / Region
EMEA
Tags
Collaboration, Global/International, Implementation
The Dutch healthcare system is transitioning to a hybrid model that emphasizes self-care, home care, and digital solutions to maintain high-quality, accessible, and affordable care. To support this transformation, SNOMED CT is being implemented nationwide to enable semantic interoperability between various electronic health record systems, allowing for safe data exchange and reuse nationally and internationally. The initial focus is on six key healthcare sectors, where umbrella organizations are developing transformation plans to integrate SNOMED CT into daily practice, in the first place for documenting diagnoses and procedures. SNOMED CT was chosen for its ability to ensure consistent and meaningful interpretation of health information, forming, along with LOINC and IDMP, the foundation for standardized healthcare terminology in the Netherlands.
Description
The Dutch healthcare system is an insurance-based system, where healthcare insurances are private,non-profit organizations.With the many challenges approaching, it aims to maintain high quality, accessible and affordable care by transforming into a hybrid care model prioritizing self-care, home care, and digital solutions.Additionally, specialized care is increasingly centralized, leading to care in a network of health care professionals, which requires parallel streams of health information for which data availability is essential in the Netherlands, a large range of EMR/EHRs are in use. To ensure semantic interoperability between these systems, SNOMED CT is chosen as one of the standards for standardized and structured recording of data in the healthcare process. Implementation of SNOMED and other standards aim to facilitate data reuse for primary and secondary use, reduce administrative burdens for healthcare providers, and support safe care and better-informed decisions across the healthcare network.
This project focusses on the steps towards implementation of SNOMED CT nationwide in multiple health care sectors.
Scope
SNOMED CT was selected based on the foundational principle of ensuring semantic interoperability in healthcare. To enable accurate reuse of health data, healthcare professionals must have mutual understanding and trust in the data they exchange, without losing meaning or intention. SNOMED CT, along with LOINC and IDMP, forms the foundation for standardised healthcare terminologies in the Netherlands. This decision is rooted in the report by RIVM with a vision on the semantic interoperability, underscoring the importance of unique, coded terminologies for consistent interpretation of health information by systems and providers.
How SNOMED CT will be used
Six prioritized healthcare sectors have been identified for nationwide implementation of SNOMED CT: Mental Health (GGZ), Primary Care (General Practitioners), Children and young people care, Specialized Medical Care, Allied Health Professions (including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, dietetics, optometry, and skin therapy), and Nursing and Home Care.
Umbrella organisations in these six sectors have been asked to analyse the potential impact of SNOMED and its implementation in daily practice and write a SNOMED transformation plan – how to transform from current used registration standards to SNOMED CT. During this process, they convene and share plans and lessons learned. Complex issues are approached together. The strategic SNOMED implementation advice recommends initiating SNOMED CT implementation by focusing initially on recording diagnoses/problems and treatments/procedures/interventions. These concepts are familiar and frequently documented across these sectors, therefore standardising them will make a high impact. Additionally, they are crucial for prioritized data exchanges targeted by the national legislation and strategy, the European Health Data Space (EHDS) patient summary, and Dutch quality registries. Other healthcare sectors are also encouraged to adopt SNOMED CT voluntarily.
Why SNOMED CT will be used
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