An Interdisciplinary Terminology for Health and Social Care - Final Report

The expected impact of an accessible and used interdisciplinary terminology is that it will contribute to good and safe health and social care services and that the quality and performance of health and social care services will be monitored and compared in a more efficient manner. This requires that health and social care managers, students, researchers,and health and social care staff have access to sources of uniform concepts and terms as the basis for documentation, information transfer,knowledge development, research, regional comparisons and statistics.

The Government commission, An Interdisciplinary Terminology for Health and Social Care to the National Board of Health and Welfare, ends on 31 March 2011. This means, among other things, that:

• the clinical terminology SNOMED CT has been translated into Swedish
• methods for administration and development have been developed and tested
• the administration and distribution of SNOMED CT has been prepared
• a large number of representatives of the target groups have been informed of or have knowledge of the interdisciplinary terminology in its entirety.

The National Board of Health and Welfare has identified five components of the interdisciplinary terminology:

• the nationally agreed upon concepts and terms, which are published in the National Board of Health and Welfare’s terminology database
• the nationally established statistical classifications and coding systems
• the clinical terminology SNOMED CT
• methods for development and administration
• user regulations.