Dear Members
Following the recent announcements regarding the proposal to increase the character limit for Descriptions, we would like to update you all on the results of the Community Consultation.
Please see the original proposal and most recent announcement on the subject here:
Key points of feedback from the community:
- Some of the feedback suggested users may need more than 12 months (from the start of the consultation period) to prepare for the change, and therefore we have postponed the current planned transition date to July 2026.
- There were no concerns raised regarding implementing these changes across our entire product portfolio, in addition to the International Edition.
- No use case for the length increase has yet been identified for the International Edition outside of the Medicinal Product Hierarchy, and so SNOMED International is planning to increase only a small number of existing terms beyond the current 255 characters, in order to remove ambiguity in some of the medicinal product terms.
- Whilst the limit will increase to a maximum of 4096 characters, the existing terms identified for an increase in character length are currently expected to increase to approximately 330 characters. This addresses concerns raised in the feedback regarding potential impact to readability of user interfaces, or reports.
- Currently less than 20 existing International Edition terms have been identified for an increase beyond 255 characters, but the final figure and proposed character lengths are subject to change.
- For example:
- id effectiveTime active moduleId conceptId languageCode typeId term caseSignificanceId
- 5089025013 20240505 1 900000000000207008 1162634005 en 900000000000003001 Pediatric vaccine product containing only acellular Bordetella pertussis antigen and Clostridium tetani toxoid antigen and Corynebacterium diphtheriae toxoid antigen and Haemophilus influenzae type b capsular polysaccharide conjugated antigen and Hepatitis B virus and inactivated whole Human poliovirus antigen (medicinal product) 900000000000020002
We have now published a Briefing Note for Members, which contains full details of the feedback and the proposed Transition plan:
We will confirm once the timelines for Transition are ratified, and will keep you updated as we proceed through the next steps of the plan.
Kind regards
Andrew Atkinson | Release Manager