News: Collaborative agreement on CPT® and SNOMED CT® reached, says AMA

The American Medical Association (AMA) and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization (IHTSDO) announced a new collaborative agreement to coordinate on the design and development of their respective coding and terminology products, according to an October 28 statement.

The organizations hope to address the world health system’s need for greater integration between proprietary code sets, says the AMA.

The AMA’s Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) is the most widely accepted medical classification system used in the United States to report medical procedures and services under both public and private health insurance programs. However, IHTSDO’s SNOMED CT® is used globally and is the

international standard that ensures semantically accurate clinical terminology for consistent use across health systems and services.

Executives of both organizations say they recognize the complementary nature of their code sets and the role they play in healthcare delivery and administration. By working in tandem, this new collaboration will produce valuable tools for physicians, hospitals, payers and others to organize vital healthcare data.

Additionally, the AMA and IHTSDO will collaborate to promote broader adoption of their content products, share tools and expertise related to the development and maintenance of their respective standards, and improve current content to better support existing and emerging uses of health data.