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Dear all,

Following on from the March 2020 Interim International Edition release, we are proposing the following plan for the July 2020 International release, in order to support all users, whether or not they consumed the March 2020 Interim release.

July 2020 International Edition Release format

The current plan is to publish the formal July 2020 International Edition with the March 2020 Interim release as the official "previous published release". 

This means that all COVID-19 content published in the March 2020 release will be present in both July 2020 Snapshot and Full files, with an effectiveTime of 20200309.  The Delta files will be relative to March 2020, containing only new content from the July 2020 editing cycle, and will not duplicate the Delta file content from the March 2020 release.

  1. For those users who consumed the March 2020 Interim Release:
    1. It causes no issues for these users who want to use either the Full, Snapshot or Delta to update to July 2020.

  2. For those users who did NOT consume the March 2020 Interim Release:
    1. It may require some workarounds only for those users who want to use the Delta files, as they will not see the new Coronavirus content from March 2020. 
    2. They should therefore use one of the following methods to update:
      1. The best approach is to first apply the March 2020 Interim Release Delta files, and after that apply the July 2020 Release Delta files.
      2. Use the Snapshot files to update to July 2020 - this approach will also be supported going forward, for all future releases (even once we move to continuous delivery)
      3. Use a new Rollup Delta package that we will publish alongside the July 2020 Release:

        1. This July 2020 Rollup Delta package would be a separate resource with clear documentation.  It would include all changes since January 2020, with the actual, official effectiveTime. Therefore all of the new Corona content would have an effectiveTime of 20200309. The rest of the content will have an effectiveTime of 20200731.

        2. This rollup package would include instructions on how to cope with multiple effectiveTimes (per componentID), as this will be a necessary feature of rollup Delta files) - for example if a concept has been added in March 2020, and then inactivated in July 2020, both records will exist in the same Delta file for this rollup period.

        3. We may also use this Rollup package as an opportunity to trial the new proposal for the Delta file naming conventions - containing the effectiveTime of BOTH the current Delta, and also the release that the Delta is taken from - for example, if a Delta is from Jan 2020 to March 2020:

            1.  sct2_Concept_Delta_INT_20200131_20200309.txt 


  3. This proposal ensures that both deltas are consistent, and this therefore a) preserves RF2 protocols, and b) pushes forward the preparations for continuous delivery.

Please see the early visibility page here for full details of these and other changes for upcoming releases:  July 2020 Early Visibility Release Notice - Planned changes to upcoming SNOMED International Release packages


PLEASE PROVIDE ANY FEEDBACK ON THIS PROPOSAL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, IN ORDER TO FACILITATE COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING FOR THE JULY 2020 RELEASE - thanks!


Kind regards

Andrew Atkinson


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