How comprehensive is the core terminology and when will it be complete?
Whether a terminology is comprehensive depends on how you use it. SNOMED CT contains the vast majority of concepts required to record the process of care across the range of clinical professions. The January 2008 release contained over 311,000 active concepts portrayed by almost 800,000 active descriptions and associated to each other by in excess of 1,360,000 defining relationships. These concepts with their inherent unique meanings and formal logic-based definitions are arranged into hierarchies covering the following areas: • Clinical findings/disorders • Procedures/interventions • Observable entities • Body structures • Organisms • Substances • Pharmaceutical/biologic products • Specimens • Special concepts • Physical objects • Physical forces • Events • Environments/geographic locations • Social contexts • Situations with explicit context • Staging and scalesNew content within existing areas of the terminology are added to each release in response to user requests, driven by advan
