Kaiser donates Convergent Medical Terminology dictionary

Kaiser Permanente is donating its Convergent Medical Terminology dictionary of more than 75,000 clinical terms and concepts in an effort to help other U.S. healthcare providers adopt and use EMRs. The donation will allow vendors and other providers to integrate a medical dictionary into existing EMR systems much more rapidly than they could on their own, Kaiser officials said at a Wednesday press conference in Washington, according to InformationWeek. The dictionary maps to other vocabulary sets, including Snomed CT, and can link to coding protocols such as ICD-9 and ICD-10. The International Healthcare Terminology Standards Development Organization is taking ownership of the CMT database, which Kaiser spent 16 years developing. Article