The term, semantic normalization, is casually thrown around, but few actually understand it or are doing it correctly. Many in the industry equate Terminology Mapping with Semantic Normalization.  While Terminology Mapping is a piece of a complete Semantic Normalization solution, it's only one component. A true Semantic Normalization solution has the following components:

• Clinical Information Model to define relationships between different core clinical concepts
• Ontology/Reference Terminology to describe core clinical concepts in a standardized representation that supports classification and aggregation
• Inferred Knowledge to enable Analytics and Clinical Decision Support
• Reconciliation to resolve patient clinical state from multiple data sources