Jamaica

Jamaica is at the start of its journey with SNOMED CT, becoming the 45th member of SNOMED International as of January 2023. These are thrilling times in digital health initiatives and Jamaica is determined to lead the way for the Member Countries of the English-speaking Caribbean Sub Region.

With the goal of “One patient, one record, data-4-life” Jamaica plans to take advantage of all that SNOMED CT has to offer in terms of semantic interoperability in order to improve the lives of patients and health care providers.

Faced with the challenge of starting from a mostly paper based system, with few electronic standalone systems, Jamaica is working on two key projects: the implementation of a Shared Health Record Open Platform (SHROP) and an Electronic Health Record, both leveraging SNOMED CT. These initiatives will be supported by a newly upgraded robust and secure ICT infrastructure with services hosted at the Data Centre of the Government of Jamaica.

SNOMED CT will prove invaluable to Jamaica’s progress over the coming years as capacity and expertise continue to be built and digital health initiatives are expanded.