Kaiser Permanente opens access to medical terminology
Kaiser Permanente has donated its Convergent Medical Terminology (CMT) translation-enabling technology to the International Healthcare Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) for U.S. distribution through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
This donation marks the result of years of work at Kaiser Permanente in creating and linking clinical terminology to support production of structured health data. Releasing it will help U.S. health professionals and hospitals achieve key meaningful use standards, the HHS stated. Structured health data will support patient care, and will generate the standardized data to support quality assessment, decision support, exchange of data for patients with multiple healthcare providers, and public health surveillance.
CMT is now in use documenting thousands of patient encounters every day. The technology will now be available for use by health IT developers and users, and can speed implementation of EHR systems, according to the HHS.
CMT consists of terminology content Kaiser Permanente has already developed, a set of tools to help create and manage terminology, and processes to control the quality of terminology that is developed. CMT includes mappings to classifications and standard vocabularies, such as SNOMED CT, which are accepted by U.S. and international health policy makers.
These resources will assist the distributed enhancement of standard vocabularies, such as SNOMED CT, to meet U.S. and international needs. Kaiser has agreed to work with the IHTSDO, the owner of SNOMED CT, and its U.S. Member, the National Library of Medicine, to help distribute an international network of terminology development.
CMT is used in the underlying architecture of Kaiser’s health IT systems to support data flow between health care providers. It provides mapping to standardize the use of terminology and ensure that systems, some already in use in most U.S. medical offices, can talk to each other.
The utilization of CMT will support a common set of medical concept descriptions so that one doctor’s diagnosis can be reconciled with another’s. CMT includes the key taxonomies required for Stage 1 meaningful use, such as problem list sets in SNOMED CT. It can help clinicians map to the standards set forth by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CMT is a component of Kaiser’s KP HealthConnect EHR, the provider's private EHR, which connects more than 8.6 million people to their physicians, nurses, pharmacists and personal information. CMT also is utilized by Kaiser’s personal health record, My Health Manager, which provides patients with access to their lab test results, medication information and refill capabilities, summaries of health conditions and other health information.
This donation marks the result of years of work at Kaiser Permanente in creating and linking clinical terminology to support production of structured health data. Releasing it will help U.S. health professionals and hospitals achieve key meaningful use standards, the HHS stated. Structured health data will support patient care, and will generate the standardized data to support quality assessment, decision support, exchange of data for patients with multiple healthcare providers, and public health surveillance.
CMT is now in use documenting thousands of patient encounters every day. The technology will now be available for use by health IT developers and users, and can speed implementation of EHR systems, according to the HHS.
CMT consists of terminology content Kaiser Permanente has already developed, a set of tools to help create and manage terminology, and processes to control the quality of terminology that is developed. CMT includes mappings to classifications and standard vocabularies, such as SNOMED CT, which are accepted by U.S. and international health policy makers.
These resources will assist the distributed enhancement of standard vocabularies, such as SNOMED CT, to meet U.S. and international needs. Kaiser has agreed to work with the IHTSDO, the owner of SNOMED CT, and its U.S. Member, the National Library of Medicine, to help distribute an international network of terminology development.
CMT is used in the underlying architecture of Kaiser’s health IT systems to support data flow between health care providers. It provides mapping to standardize the use of terminology and ensure that systems, some already in use in most U.S. medical offices, can talk to each other.
The utilization of CMT will support a common set of medical concept descriptions so that one doctor’s diagnosis can be reconciled with another’s. CMT includes the key taxonomies required for Stage 1 meaningful use, such as problem list sets in SNOMED CT. It can help clinicians map to the standards set forth by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CMT is a component of Kaiser’s KP HealthConnect EHR, the provider's private EHR, which connects more than 8.6 million people to their physicians, nurses, pharmacists and personal information. CMT also is utilized by Kaiser’s personal health record, My Health Manager, which provides patients with access to their lab test results, medication information and refill capabilities, summaries of health conditions and other health information.