National Release Center

Argentina
National Directorship for Governance and Integration
of Health Systems (DNGISS)
National Release Center Argentina

January 2018: Argentina becomes a member of SNOMED CTand creates the National Release Center

Mission: distribute terminology all over the country for both public and private organizations and
function as the only reference for SNOMED INTERNATIONAL communication.

Specific tasks:

❑ Training
❑ Development of argentinian extension based on local user's needs
❑ Development of implementation and analytics guidelines
❑ Establish a regional strategy ( Chile-Uruguay)
New or planned SNOMED CTeducation activities in Argentina
We offer and manage different options of training, according to different roles (for example: users, implementers, statistics
office workers, etc.) and levels:

-Introduction and awareness: It is addressed to policy makers and health teams, who need to know about SNOMED CTin
order to encourage its implementation in the 24 provinces and specific health institutions.

-Foundation: we encourage everyone that has been part of introduction and awareness activities, to perform Foundation
Course in spanish in Snomed International platform.

-“Standard’s morning”. Monthly training: we perform one course per month (only online nowadays) aimed to
public/private actors of our health system, in wich we offer training in two of the main standards of our National E-health
Strategy: HL7 FHIR and SNOMED CT. We developed and provide specific materials, as Openrsd platform for trainning (a model
of HCE wich has SNOMED CT implemented and it’s code is open for developers)

Provincial Statistics departments: these profesionals have been trained in the use of ICD10 for a long time. We created a
mapping simulation tool in R language to support these activities.
Trained people from January 2018

• Introduction : 450 trained people

• Foundation Snomed International: 85 trained people (data from June 2020)

• Implementation: 1200 professionals trained

• Other Snomed International Courses: 147 trained people (data form June 2020)
SNOMED CT education priorities and requirements: As NRC of a spanish speaking country it is highly needed that Snomed
International materials are available in Spanish. Many people that works in implementation speaks English, but of course not
everybody, given that it is not our language. It creates a barrier for people that may be interested but doesn’t speak your language.
Confluence materials are really useful to zoom in SNOMED CT, and we highly recommend it to our licensees, but language makes
●
that only a few people access toexpand
them. our participation in different advisory
group
Languages required for education to drive adoption of SNOMED CT in your region: It is extremely necessary to count on
● plan for Business meeting and Expo Buenos
Snomed International courses in spanish. To adopt a terminology in a Spanish speaking country is neccesary that the materials are
Aires 2021
offered in the language of the country that is implementing. Given the few people that work permanently in Argentina’s NRC (we
are only four workers for the needs of a 24 provinces and 45 million people country) translation is a task that is beyond our
scope. We make an effort to translate some materials for us, but it is not possible to translate all the content of SNOMED
CTConfluence.
National Release Center
Coordinater : Karina N. Revirol
Team: Marina Zanetti , Ines Otegui, Pablo Ayala
snomedctargentina@gmail.com, snomedctargentina@minsal.gov.ar