# Traveling back from several intense days at the quarterly SNOMED International Management Board m...

> I'm traveling back from several intense days at the quarterly SNOMED International Management Board meeting in Oslo, where I chair the Technology and Innovation Committee. Here's why internationally aligned clinical standards remain vital — and are even essential — for effective AI in healthcare.

URL: https://www.ch-healthtech.com/insights/traveling-back-several-intense-days-quarterly-snomed-international-management-bo
Markdown: https://www.ch-healthtech.com/insights/traveling-back-several-intense-days-quarterly-snomed-international-management-bo.md
Published: 2025-04-08
Updated: 2026-05-06
Author: Christian Hein
Tags: technology/artificial-intelligence, industry/medical-terminology-standards, technology/digital-health, function/innovation-management, function/strategic-planning

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Traveling back from several intense days at the quarterly SNOMED International Management Board meeting in sunny Oslo, where I chair the Technology and Innovation Committee.

I wanted to share some thoughts after intense discussions with my fellow board members, the SNOMED International Senior Leadership team, and most importantly, the experts from the 51 Snomed member countries implementing this Global Digital Health standard.

We still hear a lot of people asking, "Why do you need standards built with significant expert experience, won't AI just make these standards redundant?"

Here's why internationally aligned standards that leverage true clinical expertise will remain vital, and are even essential for effective AI in healthcare:

- **Consistent, High-Quality Data:** AI learns best when data is accurate and consistently labeled. Standards like Snomed provide the reliable structure that ensures AI models deliver precise, actionable insights

- **Seamless Interoperability:** Health data flows across countless systems. Universal clinical vocabularies break down barriers, giving AI richer, cleaner information to work with and improving overall decision-making

- **Clinically Grounded Outcomes:** AI without domain expertise risks shallow interpretations. SNOMED International's deep clinical framework supplies the context needed for meaningful patterns, robust insights, and improved real-world results.

Don Sweete Juana Lucia Flores-Candia Rory Davidson Shelley Lipon Isabelle de Zegher Bersabel Ephrem Stefanie Kemp Alfhild Stokke Bettina McMahon