AMA, IHTSDO partner to advance interoperability, standardize medical terminology

The American Medical Association (AMA) and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) have partnered together to develop an international system of coding and medical terminology products.

Interoperability of health information and analytics are two crucial developments for health systems wanting full integration of codes. The partnership of AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT), the standard in medical nomenclature to report medical procedures to both public and private insurances, and IHTSDO’s SNOMED CT internationally used medical terminology marks a clear step forward in clarifying and improving uniformity in healthcare interoperability.

“We are excited about this new work,” said IHTSDO CEO Don Sweete. “This new agreement focuses on specific projects to develop products that will benefit from the granularity and sophisticated structure of SNOMED CT, and the broad utility and adoption of CPT.”

The partnership will develop tool for clinicians, hospitals and payers to organize their healthcare data using system adopted internationally and across a vast majority of systems. Promoting a wide integration of their products, sharing tools and expertise to maintain standards and improve upon the current supporting systems are the first in the check list for the partnership.

"IHTSDO and the AMA view this collaboration as an important step toward increasing the coordination and integration of our terminology products to shape a better health care system,” said AMA CEO and Executive Vice President James L. Madara, MD. “We intend to use this collaboration as a foundation to achieve our shared goals of increased responsiveness to market needs and greater innovation through improved interoperability among ours and related terminologies."