Summary

ASSESS CT contributed to better semantic interoperability of eHealth services in Europe, in order to optimise care and to minimise harm in delivery of care. The ASSESS CT project, integrating a broad range of stakeholders, investigated the fitness of the international clinical terminology SNOMED CT as a potential standard for EU-wide eHealth deployments. In a joint one-year effort, the ASSESS CT consortium:

• addressed this challenge by investigating a number of issues related to the current use of SNOMED CT such as concrete reasons for adoption/non adoption of SNOMED CT, lessons learned, success factors, type and purpose of use, multilingualism, cultural differences, strengths and weaknesses.
• reviewed the current state of use of SNOMED CT and the fulfilment of semantic interoperability use cases, known technical and organisational drawbacks, and the way the terminology is improved and maintained, by means of literature review, survey, interviews; focus groups and Workshops.
• employed established evaluation approaches from social science. It will scrutinise adoption against two alternative scenarios: to abstain from actions at the EU level, or to devise an EU-wide semantic interoperability framework alternative without SNOMED CT.
• analysed the impact of SNOMED CT adoption from a socio-economic viewpoint, encompassing management, business, organisational, and governance aspects.

Validation of all working tasks, both political and domain-specific, was secured through four large workshops with a list of distinguished experts assembled in an Expert Panel, Committee of MS Representatives, and national focus groups.

Official website of the ASSESS CT Consortium