The purpose of this report is to provide advice to the Minister for Health on adopting SNOMED CT as a national standard for Ireland, including the implications of such a decision. SNOMED CT is a terminology system that can be implemented in computer systems to represent clinically relevant information reliably and reproducibly.

Clinical coding is ‘the translation of medical terminology as written by the clinician to describe a patient’s complaint, problem, diagnosis, treatment or reason for seeking medical attention, into a coded format’ which is nationally and internationally recognised.