International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation
The International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) is an international non-profit organization that owns SNOMED CT, a leading clinical terminology used in electronic health records. IHTSDO was founded in 2007 by 9 charter member countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) in order to acquire the rights of SNOMED CT from the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and make the development of a global clinical language for healthcare an international, collaborative effort.
Governance
IHTSDO governance is defined in the IHTSDO Articles of Association.[1] Although the organization's headquarters are in Denmark. It is constituted as an association under Danish Law, only a small number of the circa 40 employees work in Denmark. The other employees telecommute from their homes around the world, making IHTSDO a virtual organization.
Since 2007 the number of Member countries has increased from nine to twenty seven. The Members were (as of January 2015):[2] Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Israel, Lithuania, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. The Member countries provide the bulk of the institutional financing through payment of yearly Member fees, which are based on Gross National Income. Members of IHTSDO can be either an agency of a national government or another body (such as a corporation or regional government agency) which has been endorsed by an appropriate national government authority within the country it represents. Member countries commit themselves to the dissemination of the IHTSDO terminologies within their jurisdiction, including where appropriate the creation of local translations, extensions, and mappings.
The General Assembly (GA) is the organization's highest authority and is composed of representatives from all Member countries with equal representation (although some Member countries have not selected GA representatives and therefore are not represented in the GA). The GA is collectively charged with assuring that the purpose, objects and principles of the Association are pursued and that the interests of IHTSDO are safeguarded. The GA appoints the Management Board (MB), which has overall responsibility for the management and direction of IHTSDO and has a duty to act in the best interests of the organization. The Member countries are also represented by the Member Forum, which provides input on Member priorities and helps develop the IHTSDO plan of work.
The organization is structured into four major areas: customer relations, operations, products & services, and strategy.[3]
Four Standing Committees provide advice for the Management Board: Content Committee, Technical Committee, Quality Assurance Committee and Implementation & Education Committee. In addition there are topic-specific project groups (PGs) and special interest groups (SIGs) which supplement and report to the Standing Committees. These groups are open and are not elected. IHTSDO PGs and SIGs include:
| IHTSDO special interest groups (SIGs) | IHTSDO project groups |
|---|---|
| Anesthesia | Anatomy Model |
| Concept Model | Collaborative Editing Roadmap |
| Education | Content Product Development Planning |
| IHTSDO Workbench Developers | Event, Condition and Episode Model |
| Implementation | Family/General Practice Refset and ICPC Mapping |
| International Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | IHTSDO Translation Tooling |
| Mapping | Machine & Human Readable Concept Model |
| Nursing | Mapping SNOMED CT to ICD-10 |
| Pharmacy | Migration |
| Translation | Observable and Investigation Model |
| Organism & Infectious Disease Model | |
| Request Submission | |
| Substance Hierarchy Redesign | |
| Translation Quality Assessment |
IHTSDO’s work is documented on its website. The internal communication is supported by a Collaborative content management system.
Strategic Directions
The broad vision for IHTSDO is set out in their Articles of Association.[4] In 2010, the General Assembly and the Management Board agreed that the organization’s focus for the subsequent 5 years would be (1) to make it easier to use SNOMED CT for priority use cases, (2) to produce robust terminology standards that are "fit for purpose" for priority use cases, (3) to facilitate use of SNOMED CT with other international standards, (4) to strengthen responsiveness and clinical governance of SNOMED CT, and (5) to sustain and strengthen the organizational foundations of IHTSDO.[5] Strategic Directions for 2015-2020 will reflect the organization's shift towards being a product and service organization.
IHTSDO aims to achieve interoperability and harmonization between its terminology products and those standards produced by other international standards development organisations (SDOs). In support of this IHTSDO has negotiated a number of collaboration agreements with other SDOs, such as the World Health Organization, HL7, ICN, IEEE, Regenstrief Institute & NPU,[6] openEHR, and WONCA.
Meetings
IHTSDO organizes periodic conferences. Generally within these conferences time is allocated to meetings of standing committees, project groups and SIGs, to enable them to meet face to face. In addition there are meetings of the Member Forum and the Affiliate Forum. Committees, PGs and SIGs communicate via conference calls and manage messages and documents in its own content management system (CMS).
Documentation
To support implementation of SNOMED CT a number of publications are produced by IHTSDO. These range from user guides to technical implementation guides as well as some educational materials and videos. Documents are available through the public website, but some items such as the videos can be found via YouTube. Member countries also contribute into the public domain and documents, which can often be found on individual Member country websites; a link to these is provided on the IHTSDO webpages.
Office
The IHTSDO head office is located at Gammeltorv 4, 1. sal, 1457 Copenhagen K, Denmark.