Code SNOMED-CT

We consider here the full international version of SNOMED-CT, not limited to the Global Patient Set.

National extensions exist and are used to represent administered vaccines, such as the Canadian Vaccine Catalogue or the Australian Medicines Terminology. Yet such extensions are considered here as custom codes, that only use SNOMED-CT as a supporting framework.

Although it uses a finer grain of classification than the ATC, the SNOMED-CT also aims at describing product classes rather than actual products. With 55 live codes describing vaccine products (previous codes have been deprecated in 2020), the completeness index is at 5%

54 SNOMED-CT codes represent 495 concrete vaccines, giving a precision index of 11%

If we consider the full version of SNOMED-CT rather than the Global Patient Set, we have a structured ontology documenting the included antigens and the target diseases. There are some remaining ambiguities, but they are marginal. The informativeness index can be set at 100%

Like ATC, the SNOMED-CT labels are generic and written in English, and extremely unlikely to be written identically in a vaccination card. The tolerance index is set to 0.

There are not known resources that would match other code systems with SNOMED-CT. Portugal has adopted the international version of SNOMED-CT for its immunisation Information System, but only as a complement to the INFARMED pharmaceutical code. The digital inclusiveness index is set to 0.

SNOMED-CT codes could only be translated to equivalent generic codes. The translatability index is set to 0.