These form an agreed UK list of health-care terminology named after the general practitioner who devised them initially in the 1970s. The coding system provides a basis for computerized clinical records that can be shared across professional and administrative boundaries. The codes accommodate the different views of specialists, but use simple terms without any loss of the fine detail necessary in specialist terminology. The Read Codes have been merged with the world’s other leading coding and classification system: the College of American Pathologists’ Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine.