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Overview of Current Notices

For additional Relevant links with regards to Content Development Information please click here Content Development Information

. 2018 EditionSummary of Substances Changes

Top Level

  • Dietary subhierarchy. To remove context of use from the substance concepts and manage the situation where substances can be both a pharmaceutical ingredient and a foodstuff 80 substances that had a tag of “- dietary” in the Fully Specified Name (FSN) and the Preferred Term (PT) were inactivated. Replacement concepts concept without  "-dietary" in the FSN and PT were created. The top level concept "Dietary substance (substance)" has been inactivated and replaced with a new concept "Edible substance (substance)".
  • Radioactive isotope substances. These concepts have been remodelled and the terming normalised to provide consistent representation without the use of carats.
  • Cancer related substance. The subhierarchy has now been removed. Some concept have been inactivated. Some have been moved within the substances hierarchy.

Substance groupers including Disposition, Structure and Combined groupers have been remodelled and additional grouper concepts created as required. The inactivation of role groupers in the substances hierarchy has been initiated.

Disposition groupers

  • Disposition groupers within the substance hierarchy have been modelled as fully defined concepts. The creation of the new top level substance concept of "Substance categorised by disposition" will allow these to be modelled by proximal primitive authoring.
  • Existing disposition grouper concepts in the substances hierarchy have been retained where appropriate and have been remodelled to conform to SNOMED CT Editorial policy. Examples as below.
    •  Substance with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor mechanism of action (substance)
    •  Substance with beta-1 adrenergic receptor agonist mechanism of action (substance)
    •  Substance with phosphodiesterase inhibitor mechanism of action (substance)
  • Currently there are in excess of 200 disposition groupers in the substances hierarchy that have been remodelled.
  • Work to remodel existing substance disposition groupers is ongoing.
  • New concepts will be added as identified.

Role groupers

Role groupers within the substances hierarchy are being inactivated where this is possible without creating disruption in other hierarchies. At the start of this work there were approximately 600 role groupers. Currently in the region of 100 role grouper substance concepts have been inactivated or remodelled.This work is ongoing.

Many of these role grouper concepts remain in the substances hierarchy pending a solution for the roles concepts within the terminology as a whole and so will still be present in the July 2018 release.

Structural groupers

Structural groupers within the substance hierarchy have been modelled as primitive concepts.

Existing structural grouper concepts in the substances hierarchy have been retained where appropriate and have been remodelled to conform to SCT Editorial policy.

New structural grouper concepts have been added.

Groupers that identify X or derivatives where X is a specific substance will be inactivated. Some of these concepts have already been inactivated. As the implementation of the IS Modification attibute is carried out the remainder of these concepts will be inactivated.

Structural groupers that reference a chemical group will be retained.

e.g. Amides and derivatives (substance)

Where the structural group name also refers to a specific chemical the grouper has been re-termed “Substance with X structure” 

e.g. Substance with tetracycline structure (substance)

Combined groupers

Combined groupers that include a role will be inactivated where this is possible without causing disruption in other hierarchies. Inactivation of some of these concepts in the substances hierarchy is waiting on a solution for the roles concepts within the terminology as a whole and so will still be present in the July 2018 release.

Groupers of disposition + structure will be retained in the substance hierarchy. Existing concepts have been remodelled to conform to SCT Editorial policy. Examples as below.

Antimony compound with antiprotozoal mechanism of action (substance)

Quaternary ammonium compound with anticholinergic mechanism of action (substance)

Piperidine derivative with histamine receptor antagonist mechanism of action (substance)

New concepts will be added as required.

Use of the Is Modification attribute

To date, we have added n≈1200 new S Modification attribute. This number will most likely increase by the end of the release. This has achieved a flattening of the substance hierarchy. Priority has been given to the remodelling of substances associated with the definition of medicinal products.

The following guidelines have been developed.

1. Substances may have zero to many Is modification attribute(s). e.g  Iodine (131-I) labelled monoclonal antibody (substance) has 2 IS MODIFICATION attribute values.

2. Salts have a IS MODIFICATION relationship to the base e.g. Doxepin hydrochloride (substance) IS MODIFICATION of Doxepin (substance)

3. Hydrates have a IS MODIFICATION relationship to the unspecified salt e.g. Caffeine hydrate (substance) IS MODIFICATION of Caffeine (substance)

4. Anhydrous salts have a IS MODIFICATION relationship to the unspecified salt e.g. Theophylline anhydrous (substance) IS MODIFICATION of Theophylline (substance)

5. Stereoisomers are subtypes of the unspecified substance. e.g.. Dextrothyroxine IS A thyroxine. 

6. There is no IS MODIFICATION relationship between stereoisomers.

Further guidelines will be added to the published documentation as they are developed.

The initial population of the IS MODIFICATION attribute is still subject to manual authoring input to ensure compliance to Editorial guidelines and so some areas of content may appear to be non-conformant in the Alpha release data.

Improvement to the Release file naming convention for the Asssociation Reference file

In order to improve the description of this file, we will be updating the file naming convention from:

'der2_cRefset_AssociationReferenceSnapshot_INT_*.txt'

to:

'der2_cRefset_AssociationSnapshot_INT_*.txt'

....as of the January 2018 International Edition

January 2018 International Edition - COMPLETE
ItemsProposed improvement

Planned Release date

(*this is provisional only and is subject to change)

1

Replacement of the Stated Relationship files with the new OWL Axiom refset files

Following on from all of the previous announcements providing early visibility of the transition plan, SNOMED International would now like to provide technical details of the planned migration from Stated Relationships to OWL files.  This plan has been discussed and agreed with numerous stakeholders from the community, and will be implemented over the course of the next two International Releases, as follows:

January 2019:

  • The International Edition package (packageA) will include both active Stated Relationships plus a partial OWL file containing a subset of the OWLAxioms.  This file will contain both OWLAxiom + OWLOntology refsets combined into one OWLExpression file, in each section of the International Release package (Full, Snapshot and Delta):
    • sct2_sRefset_OWLExpressionFull_INT_20190131.txt
    • sct2_sRefset_OWLExpressionSnapshot_INT_20190131.txt
    • sct2_sRefset_OWLExpressionDelta_INT_20190131.txt
  • We will also publish a separate optional package (packageB) containing a complete set of OWL records (including all Axioms - sufficient, transitivity etc) set to January 2019 effectiveTimes, as if this was the complete OWL file that we will introduce in July 2019.  This package would also contain all stated relationships from the previous release (July 2018 International Edition) marked as inactive.  
  • packageB will therefore act as a second Demonstration release (similar to the September 2018 package), allowing everyone to thoroughly trial how the July 2019 Int Edition will work for them in practice.  It will, therefore, retain the same nomenclature and formatting as the Sept 2018 Demo release, with everything x prefixed and labelled to warn against use in Production clinical systems.
  • packageB will be published in MLDS alongside the International Edition, and will therefore be available to everyone who has access to the International Edition, so that they can choose to either download it or not.
  • Release Notes will be updated to clearly explain all of the above.

July 2019:

  • The International Edition package (packageCwill include both inactive Stated Relationships plus a complete OWL file (combined) from July 2019 effectiveTime onwards (ie) with NO history of OWL records that weren’t included in the Jan 2019 International Edition package itself (as opposed to the optional package).
  • We will also publish a separate optional package (packageD) containing an OWL (combined) Delta file, identifying which of the concepts have had modelling changes in relation to packageB.
  • No support for Stated Relationships will be provided from this point onwards, however we will continue to include the inactivated Stated Relationships in future International Edition packages, until it is decided that this is no longer required.
  • Anyone who isn’t yet ready to move forward with OWL will therefore remain on the January 2019 International Edition until they are ready to update to OWL with the July 2019 version onwards.
  • Release Notes will be updated to clearly explain all of the above.

  

The inferred relationship file will maintain the same format and structure, though it will no longer contain all necessary and sufficient conditions. The inferred relationship file is represented in Necessary Normal Form for distribution of relationships. It is a collection of all the necessary conditions and represents a subset of the full semantics from the 2018 July release and onwards. Most users will benefit from the improvements in the inferred relationships without requiring changes to their existing systems.

A set of documentations has been developed to support the Logic Profile Enhancements. 


Users should carefully analyse any potential impact to their systems (upload routines, etc) and make provisions for these changes urgently (if not already done), in order to prevent any issues when these changes come into effect in January 2019.  Please contact SNOMED International at support@snomed.org with “OWL Axiom refset files implementation question” in the subject line.    


January 2019 International Release +

July 2019 International Release

2LOINC timeline changes - please refer to Roadmap link here LOINCJuly 2018 and potentially other future releases - On hold
23

Revision of IS A relationships for anatomy concepts 

The new anatomy concept model has implemented the new enhanced Description Logic features, e.g. reflective reflexive and transitive propertyproperties, general concept additional axioms, for consistent logical modeling. However, the new model cannot be implemented in production because these DL features currently are not available in production. The implementation of them will depend on the enhanced logic profile for SNOMED CT which is under development by the Modeling AG. Yet, the inferred IS A relationship The inferred IS A relationships from the OWL anatomy ontology can be have been reviewed and the changes have been implemented in the production. This will utilise the outcomes of the new anatomy model as well as evaluate the design of the new model. In particular, it is important to review the changes of IS-A relationships in anatomy for quality assurance and minimise  The potential impact to other hierarchies, such as disorders, procedures, observables, situations etc are also reviewed as part of the project.

The first subject area for revision is the revision of sub-hierarchy of skin structure. The majority changes have been made in the January 2018 26107004|Structure of musculoskeletal system (body structure)| has been planned for the January 2019 release. The rest body systems will be completed in July 2018 release.revised in the future releases.

The For July 2018 release, the subject area for revision of IS A relationships will be determined and updated in the following confluence page.

July 2019 International Release
3

Summary of Drugs changes

New hierarchies 766940004 | Role (role) and subhierarchy 766941000 | Therapeutic role (role) created with additional subtypes to be added in future releases

New semantic tags (role)

Attribute types New attributes created:

  • 766953001 |Count of active ingredient (attribute)|
  • 766954007 |Count of base and modification pair (attribute)|
  • 766952006 |Count of base of active ingredient (attribute)|
  • 763032000 |Has unit of presentation (attribute)|
  • 766939001 |Plays role (attribute)|

Grouper concepts representing disposition, intended site, and/or structure Grouper concepts representing disposition, intended site, and/or structure sufficiently defined by modeling to proximal primitive concept, adding defining attributes, and updating descriptions per editorial guidelines (n≈550).

New high level grouper concepts created as an incremental improvement with additional subtypes to be added in future releases:

  • 766779001 |Medicinal product categorized by disposition (product)|
  • 763760008 |Medicinal product categorized by structure (product)|
  • 767102007 |Medicinal product categorized by chemical element (product)|

Product role concepts Concepts representing product role relocated as stated descendants of 763087004 | Medicinal product categorized by role (product) with definition status = primitive and attributes inactivated (n≈ 400)

For further details see Briefing Note Use of Additional Axiom Functionality and Remodeling Product Roles

Medicinal product (MP) concepts - MP-containing concepts sufficiently defined by modeling to proximal primitive concept, adding defining attributes, and updating descriptions per editorial guidelines (n≈ 3750). Includes the following attributes:

  • Has active ingredient (n≈4650)

Medicinal product form (MPF) concepts - MPF-containing concepts sufficiently defined by modeling to proximal primitive concept, adding defining attributes, and updating descriptions per editorial guidelines (n≈2100). Includes the following attributes:

  • Has active ingredient (n≈2400)
  • Has manufactured dose form (n≈2150)

Clinical drug (CD) concepts - CD-containing precisely concepts sufficiently defined by modeling to proximal primitive concept, adding defining attributes, and updating descriptions per editorial guidelines (n≈ 4850). Includes the following attributes:

  • Count of base of active ingredient (n≈4850)
  • Has basis of strength substance (n≈5600)
  • Has concentration strength denominator unit (n≈1450)
  • Has concentration strength denominator value (n≈1450)
  • Has concentration strength numerator unit (n≈1450)
  • Has concentration strength numerator value (n≈1450)
  • Has manufactured dose form (n≈4850)
  • Has precise active ingredient (n≈5550)
  • Has presentation strength denominator unit (n≈4750)
  • Has presentation strength denominator value (n≈4750)
  • Has presentation strength numerator unit (n≈4750)
  • Has presentation strength numerator value (n≈4750)

Documentation Notification for Briefing Notes, Editorial Guidelines, and other documentation updates are posted on the project group website as they become available; see Drug Model Working Group - Directory for details

Briefing

Briefing note - Use of Additional Axiom Functionality and Remodeling Product Roles.pdf

Briefing note - Implications of describing liquid dose form product concepts using presentation strength.pdf

July 2018 International Edition
4
4

Improvement for the representation of role groups

It is important to clearly indicate if an attribute is grouped or not because role grouping has impact to semantics and classification results. The majority of the Modeling Advisory Group members recommended explicit representation for role groups. There will be two key improvements for representation in the July 2019 release. The changes are demonstrated in the January 2019 Demo release package.

Firstly, role groups are explicitly stated and represented by the concept 609096000|Role group (attribute)| as an object property in the OWL axiom refset.

Secondly, for the inferred relationship file, role group 0 will be only applied to attributes that are not logically grouped, e.g. not a value of 609096000|Role group (attribute)| in an OWL axiom or grouped = 0 in the MRCM. This addresses the potential confusion whether an attribute is grouped or not in the role group 0. 

The improvements will provide consistent representation for role groups in the OWL axioms, inferred relationship file, and diagramming of the concept model.

July 2019 International Release
5

MRCM Changes

MRCM changes in the July 2019 release

July 2019 International Release
6

Changes to 64572001 |Disease (disorder)| hierarchy

A bulk operation has been run against 17308 concepts in the << 64572001 |Disease (disorder)| hierarchy which has copied any inferred attributes into the stated view where they did not already exist.  In addition where the Proximal Primitive Parent could be correctly calculated to be 64572001 |Disease (disorder)| the existing immediate fully defined parents have been inactivated and replaced with Disease.

This process brings these concepts into line with SNOMED International's Editorial Policy of using a Proximal Primitive Parent where all appropriate attributes are stated and classification ensures that the correct parents are assigned in the inferred view.   This is considered to be an efficient authoring style as the hierarchy is maintained mostly automatically by the classifier, rather than requiring authors to manually curate parent child relationships within hierarchies.

July 2019 International Release
7

Planned changes to 'Co-occurrent and due to' pattern

During the implementation of the new Description Logic features a conflict was uncovered between the modeling of 'Co-occurrent and due to' and General Concept Inclusions (GCIs). This has resulted in the need to reconsider the modeling of "Co-occurrent and due' and update the Editorial Guide for this area.

There are a number of new concepts in the January 2019 release that are based upon the existing guidance for 'Co-occurrent and due to'. The plan is to update the Editorial Guide and all concepts that are currently modeled as 'Co-occurrent and due to' starting from the July 2019 release.

July 2019 International Release

January 2020 International Release

8

Revision of 7890003 |Contracture of joint (disorder)|

Contracture of joint and its subtypes have been remodeled to more precisely represent the anatomical structures associated with contracture.  Joint contractures are due to abnormal shortening of the soft tissues surrounding a joint as opposed to an abnormal morphology of the bony structure of a joint, so the finding site has been changed to "Structure of X joint region".

This has resulted in the removal of the previously inferred parent of "Arthropathy" and replaced by "Disorder of joint region" and "Finding of joint movement".

July 2019 International Release
9

Revision of 298180004 |Finding of range of joint movement (finding)

The concepts under the subhierarchy 298180004 |Finding of range of joint movement (finding)| are being remodeled to represent the finding site of <<785818007 |Structure of joint region (body structure)| instead of <<39352004 |Joint structure (body structure)|. 

Range of movement of a joint region can be impacted by both bone and soft tissues, therefore the use of 39352004 |Joint structure (body structure)| was too restrictive and caused issues in other areas of the terminology.  These changes will be made over the course of two releases due to the number of affected concepts.

July 2019 International Release

January 2020 International Release

10

Planned changes to 432119003 | Aneurysm (disorder) and descendants

Review of the hierarchy with parent concept of 432119003 | Aneurysm (disorder) |
It was noted that there were 4 potential ways of expressing the presence of an aneurysm:

  • Aneurysm of xxx artery
  • Unruptured aneurysm of xxx artery
  • Non-ruptured aneurysm of xxx artery
  • Nonruptured aneurysm of xxx artery

The number of concepts using either unruptured, non-ruptured or nonruptured were 13/1/4 respectively. There are 97 'Aneurysm of xxx artery' concepts.

A decision was taken to inactivate those concepts of the form 'unruptured/non-ruptured/nonruptured aneurysm of xxx artery' as duplicates and point to their 'aneurysm of xxx artery' equivalents where available and to create new concepts where they were not.

July 2019 International Release
11

Planned changes to Implantation and Insertion procedures

Work commenced on content tracker IHTSDO-175

Jira
serverIHTSDO JIRA
serverIdb202d822-d767-33be-b234-fec5accd5d8c
keyIHTSDO-175

Review of FSN to align Implantation and Insertion procedures by adding the method that corresponds with that stated in the FSN.

Work on this project will continue for future releases after July 2019.

July 2019 International Release

January 2020 International Release

12

Planned Inactivation of 186005001|Other ethnic non-mixed (NMO)|

186005001|Other ethnic non-mixed (NMO)| and children will be inactivated with a status of MOVED ELSEWHERE.

July 2019 International Release
13

Summary of Substances Changes

  • 420934007 |Skin graft material (substance)| will be significantly revised and additional concepts created to comprehensively capture both the origin of the skin graft and thickness (full thickness, split thickness etc). Text definitions will be included. 304040003 |Skin graft operation (procedure)| and descendants will be significantly revised as a result of changes to the substance hierarchy.

July 2019 International Release

14

Summary of Changes for the Drug Project

For 2019-January, CDs that had not yet been sufficiently defined were relocated to be descendants of 770654000 |TEMPORARY parent for CDs that are not updated (product)| (n≈2700). Concepts that could not be mapped to a corresponding dm+d or RxNorm concept have been inactivated as Outdated for the 2019-July Release with a historical relationship to a corresponding MPF-only concept (or to a MP-only concept if no appropriate MPF-only concept existed at the time of inactivation). (n≈870). The remainder of the concepts (n≈1800) being reviewed and most are expected to be sufficiently defined for the 2019-July Release. Further early visibility updates will be provided as work progresses.

July 2019 International Release
15

Inactivation of 121278003 |Drug measurement (procedure)

121278003 |Drug measurement (procedure)| has been inactivated for the 2019-July Release and descendant concepts have been updated accordingly. Because exposure to the substance being measured may or may not be due to the substance being used in a medicinal product, the grouper was inactivated as Ambiguous with Possibly equivalent to relationship to 430925007 |Measurement of substance (procedure)|.

July 2019 International Release
16

Summary of Organism Changes

  • Content tracker IHTSDO-1003 - Clarification, simplification and correction of the top levels of the SNOMED CT Organism hierarchy.
July 2019 International Release
17

Quality Initiative

Information about the project can found here - Quality Initiative - Progress

Note: There are changes to the Service Level Agreement for the CRS as a result of the Quality Initiative:

https://www.snomed.org/SNOMED/media/SNOMED/documents/Early-Visibility-of-Changes-to-Service-Level-Agreement-International-Content-Request-Service-(CRS).pdf

July 2019 International Release

January 2020 International Release

18

Abrasion

As a result of changes made during the QI project for the January 2019 release, there are now 2 concepts which have the same preferred term. 

781488002 |Abrasion of foot (finding) and 211402004 |Abrasion of foot (disorder)

782201009 |Abrasion (finding)| and 399963005 |Abrasion (disorder)|

These concepts will be addressed as part the QI project for the July 2019 release.

July 2019 International Release
19

Concrete domains and numeric representation

Numerics are represented by concepts in the Medicinal product concept model in SNOMED CT, which is an interim solution before the implementation of concrete domains to support data types, such as decimal, integer, string and date/time. The implementation of concrete domains depends on the OWL expression reference set and the update of inferred relationship file. The first complete OWL expression refset will be available in the July 2019 international release. It will take time to update the specification for the inferred relationship file and consult with the community of practice. When they are ready, strength in medicinal product model can be transformed to concrete domains. The transformation will be completed by technical changes without impact to classification results.

July 2019 International Release
July 2018 International Edition
5

Internal QA

Test and procedure status: Inactivated 143 concepts in the Situations and Findings hierarchies with pattern "Test/procedure OFFERED" and "Test/procedure NOT OFFERED" as these represent an administrative status.

6

Internal QA

Inactivation of Agencies and organizations (qualifier value) and subtypes: moved to UK extension i.e. 66 concepts inactivated.

7

Improvement to the Release package naming convention

In order to ensure that the status of each package is correctly identified, we will be capitalising the third element of the naming convention. For example therefore, instead of the January 2018 International Edition release package being called:

SnomedCT_InternationalRF2_Production_20180131T120000Z.zip

It will instead be called:

SnomedCT_InternationalRF2_PRODUCTION_20180131T120000Z.zip

Alpha/Beta releases will be called:

SnomedCT_InternationalRF2_ALPHA_20180131T120000Z.zip

SnomedCT_InternationalRF2_BETA_20180131T120000Z.zip

This should have no impact on most users, this is provided for visibility of anyone who's upload routine might be case-sensitive.

January 2018 International Edition - COMPLETE
8