Every time a healthcare professional records a diagnosis, an allergy, or a laboratory result, they are making a decision on how to name something. And that name matters. If two different systems refer to the same clinical reality in different ways, the data will not understand each other—it won't travel, and it won't be useful for making informed decisions. Clinical terminology is not a technical detail; it is the foundation upon which any healthcare system that wants to truly function is built.

SNOMED CT is currently the reference standard in this field. With more than 375,000 active concepts, nearly 2,850,000 descriptions, and around 1,000,000 declared relationships, it is one of the most comprehensive terminologies in the health information domain. And even so, that is not enough.

A system that continues to grow
Every healthcare system has its own particularities, its own regulatory context, and its own medications. The National Health System is no exception. To meet its specific needs, SNOMED CT is expanded with specific extensions for Spain.

The Spain extension of the SNS incorporates 6,167 concepts, 20,897 descriptions, and 13,599 additional relationships (December 2025). The medication extension adds another 16,454 concepts, 17,369 descriptions, and 18,407 more relationships (March 2026). The SNS Extension for Spain is published semi-annually, while the Medication Extension for Spain is updated monthly. The SNS SNOMED CT Browser is deployed under an Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.

These are staggering figures. And behind each one, there is a decision, a validation process, and someone who needs to find the right information at the right time. Managing that volume of knowledge, keeping it up to date, and making it available to the SNS professionals is a challenge that requires more than just good will.

The decision to build something of our own

SNOMED International already has its own browser to explore the terminology's content. But five years ago, the Ministry of Health made the decision to build its own browser specifically adapted to the requirements of the SNS, going beyond what the international tool could offer.

The project launched in April 2021, and Veratech was the company in charge of developing it, in close collaboration with the Spanish National Release Center for SNOMED CT to ensure that the tool met the real needs of those who would be using it.

A browser designed for the SNS

The result is a tool that not only provides access to international terminology but also incorporates all the specific knowledge of the Spanish healthcare ecosystem. Its main features include the following:

• Support for the SNS extension for Spain and the medication extension, with all the additional information that the international system does not include.
• Support for the reference sets (Refsets) specific to these extensions, which allow for the grouping and management of concepts according to specific SNS criteria.
• Processes for loading and validating extensions
• Spanish-adapted search, so that professionals can find what they are looking for in their own language, without having to deal with approximate translations or terminology in English.
• Analysis of the searched concepts, which allows for the identification of usage patterns and the detection of opportunities to continue improving and expanding the extensions for Spain.

A use that doesn't stop growing

The browser was deployed in December 2021. Since then, its use has not stopped increasing, which says quite a bit about the real need it was meant to fill.

In 2025 alone, more than 266,000 searches were performed, more than 728 daily queries. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the days of highest activity, and the slot between 11:00 and 14:00 concentrates the bulk of the consultations. The most searched concepts are diabetes, allergy, and fever.

Nothing extraordinary. Precisely for that reason, it is significant; these are the day-to-day terms of any healthcare professional, those that appear in thousands of clinical records every day. That someone searches for them 728 times a day means that the browser is already part of how the SNS works.

Available to everyone

Five years after those first months, the browser continues to grow. New functionalities, new content, and new needs to cover. Everything it contains today and what is to come is openly available to anyone interested in:
snomedsns.es