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CHICAGO, August 12, 2020 -- The American Medical Association (AMA) and SNOMED International announced a concrete demonstration of how Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) and SNOMED CT work together to enable better outcomes and enhanced resource utilization throughout the health ecosystem. 

The AMA-SNOMED International demonstration project underscores the power of the two terminologies together – providing a clear path from clinical documentation to resource utilization insights. The demonstration tool will highlight how health care administrators can leverage both code sets to align resources to population needs in complex clinical areas such as breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. 

Both serving a specific purpose, the AMA’s CPT codes are vital to health care administration and classification in the United States, while SNOMED CT serves as the global standard for clinical terminology. At a broad level, the AMA-SNOMED International collaboration aims to improve integration between the CPT and SNOMED CT terminologies, by producing tools for physician practices, hospitals, payers, and other stakeholders to better organize healthcare data. 

The goal of this joint initiative is to provide opportunities for health care stakeholders to explore additional scenarios, capture new insights, and evaluate how the combined terminologies can be used to strengthen care in their health care systems. To this end, the AMA and SNOMED International have engaged in this joint initiative to explore creating a demonstration space, or sandbox, where clinical analytics scenarios can be demonstrated and, in the future, run securely. 

“The AMA is focused on improving access to data for solutions to the challenges of an aging population that is growing, a rise in chronic conditions and co-morbidities, and an increasingly burdened healthcare workforce,” said AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James Madara, M.D. “The AMA’s collaboration with SNOMED International supports the shift to digitization and will help the health care industry optimize resources and increase efficiencies as it works towards achieving better patient outcomes, improved access and lower costs.”

“The American Medical Association is a valued partner and I am pleased that we have continued to evolve our relationship since our first collaboration was signed in 2016” offered SNOMED CT CEO, Don Sweete. “Our next chapter will focus on demonstrating the clinical analytics benefit from using data coded with SNOMED CT, as well as how integration between SNOMED CT and CPT provide key information to support the efficient and cost-effective management of healthcare organizations.”

A committed supporter and participant of the SNOMED CT Expo, the AMA continues to bring its focus on data driven solutions through thought leadership at the conference. Over the course of this year’s Expo, taking place October 8-9, the AMA will share how to leverage SNOMED CT Encoded Data to Design, Implement and Track Remote Monitoring Programs through a CPT Code Set Use Case as well as the approach to Aligning Clinician Priorities with Terminology and Standards Development. Matt Menning, director of engagement for the AMA’s Integrated Health Model Initiative, along with other key AMA ambassadors will lead the community through these sessions.

Both organizations are dedicated to the pursuit of unambiguous exchange of clinical information. Together they seek to address the health system’s emerging need for greater integration in support of interoperability as well as health and resource data analytics.