1 Introduction

SNOMED CT terminology provides a common language that enables a consistent way of indexing, storing, retrieving, and aggregating clinical data across specialties and sites of care.

The International Health Terminology Standards Development organisation (IHTSDO^®), trading as SNOMED International, maintains the SNOMED CT technical design, the content architecture, the SNOMED CT content (includes the concepts table, the descriptions table, the relationships table, a history table, and ICD mappings), and related technical documentation.

The SNOMED CT Irish Extension - packages these components for release every April and October, to be used with the latest SNOMED CT International Edition release.

The same content can be viewed online using the SNOMED CT browser, and eHealth Ireland website

2 Background

This document provides a summarized description of the content changes included in the October 2021 Production release of the SNOMED Clinical Terms^® Managed Service Ireland Extension package.

It will also include technical notes detailing the known issues which have been identified (should any of these exist). These are content or technical issues where the root cause is understood, and the fix has been discussed and agreed, but has yet to be implemented.

This Ireland Extension package is dependent upon, and should therefore be consumed in conjunction with the SNOMED CT® July 2021 International Edition release.

2.1 Scope

This document is written for the purpose described above and is not intended to provide details of the technical specifications for SNOMED CT or encompass every change made during the release.

3 Content Development Activity

3.1 Summary

Content from the SNOMED CT® July 2021 International Edition release has been included, alongside additional components for use in Ireland. 

This extension contains concepts, relationships and reference sets for healthcare professionals. 

3.2 New and Updated Content

New content in this release:

This is the 6th SNOMED CT Irish Edition Production release.

New and updated content

Concept statistics

The SNOMED Irish National Release Centre published 15 new concepts, and these are available in the Irish Extension October release.

Table 1. New concepts in the Irish Edition October release

Other concepts re-activated for use in Irish extension

 Refer to Appendix 1, Table 1.1 to view the new concepts.

 This content was derived through the dataset specification process and includes concepts from

Reference sets 

821000220101 Chronic Disease management 8 inactive concepts remain

811000220108  Coronavirus Reference Set Ireland 2 inactive concepts remain

841000220107   Gynaecology Discharge Summary no change

1531000220102  Irish Nursing and Quality Care Metrics 85 new concepts added, 9 removed

831000220103 2 Irish National Early Warning Score  2 inactive concepts remain

1541000220106 Make Every Contact Count no change

1551000220108 Safeguarding Ireland no change

1561000220105  eServices 1 inactive concept changed (821000220101) - 10 inactive concepts remain


The SNOMED Irish National Release Centre promoted 82 new concepts and these will be available in the SNOMED CT January 2021 International Edition release.

Refer to Appendix 2, Table 1.2 to view 

4 Technical notes

4.1 Known Issues

Known Issues are content or technical issues where the root cause is understood, and the resolution has been discussed and agreed but has yet to be implemented.  This can be due to a number of reasons, from lack of capacity within the current editing cycle, to the risk of impact to the stability of SNOMED CT if the fix were to be deployed at that stage in the Product lifecycle.  

For the SNOMED CT Managed Service - Ireland Extension Release, the following Known Issues were identified, and agreed to be resolved in the next editing cycle:

4.2 Resolved Issues

Resolved Issues are those where the resolution has been discussed and agreed, and has been implemented in time for this release. 

For the SNOMED CT Managed Service - Ireland Extension Release, the following Issues were Resolved: 

4.3 New Relationship Concrete Values files

Please be aware that the following new files have been added to the Ireland Extension Release package, representing the new 

Concrete Domains content being introduced in this editing cycle, in line with the related changes to the International Edition Release:

• xsct2_RelationshipConcreteValues_Delta_IE1000220_20211021.txt
• xsct2_RelationshipConcreteValues_Snapshot_IE1000220_20211021.txt
• xsct2_RelationshipConcreteValues_Full_IE1000220_20211021.txt

Appendix 1

Table 1.1

Appendix 2

Table 1.2

These drugs g=have been promoted to the International edition of SNOMED through the Content request service and will appear in the January 2022 International edition