November 4, 2020
For over a year, SNOMED International has proposed to the Community of Practice an enhancement to SNOMED CT by adding the capability to express Concrete Domain values. This enhancement will initially target improvements in the Pharmaceutical / biologic product hierarchy. This feature will be used to better express strengths and concentrations of clinical drugs as well as ingredient counts, specifically supplying clinical drug strengths as true numbers, rather than using the existing work-around of concepts which represent those numbers.
Following on from past communications, SNOMED International is providing more technical details of the planned transition. Please see here for details of the current proposed technical changes. Throughout this transition, note that the technical proposal is still in the consultation stage, and changes may still be made before the final solution is implemented.
The transition to concrete domains has been discussed and agreed upon with numerous stakeholders from the community, and as such is targeted to be implemented over the course of the next two International Release cycles.
In Q1, 2021, A technical preview will be published in line with the January 2021 International Edition, with drug concept strengths and counts expressed as concrete values in the new Relationships file, and currently planned to be a full RF2 International Edition package.
Targeted for Q3 2021, the July 2021 International Edition will be the first release after the transition to Concrete Domains, which will impact inferred relationship file changes and stated axiom file changes to the RF2 package as well as making additional features available in the International Edition. A detailed account of these changes can be reviewed on SNOMED International’s January 2021 Early Visibility Release Notice page by following the link and searching “concrete domains.”
If you foresee any critical issues with the transition plans, or have any questions regarding any of these upcoming changes, please contact us immediately at support@snomed.org with “Concrete Domains transition question” in the subject line.