This document forms part of the September 2024 SNOMED CT® US Edition release distributed by the US National Library of Medicine, and is subject to the SNOMED CT® Affiliate License, details of which may be found at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/healthit/snomedct/snomed_licensing.html.
This material includes SNOMED Clinical Terms® (SNOMED CT®) which is used by permission of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO). All rights reserved. SNOMED CT®, was originally created by The College of American Pathologists. "SNOMED" and "SNOMED CT" are registered trademarks of International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation, trading as SNOMED International.
Page At A Glance
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 SNOMED CT NL Edition is a combination of the full June 2022 SNOMED CT International Edition and the US Extension of SNOMED CT.
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 NL Edition is developed and maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine and is available to authorized Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus Licensees. This material includes SNOMED CT which is used by permission of the IHTSDO. All rights reserved.
SNOMED CT was originally created by the College of American Pathologists. "SNOMED" and "SNOMED CT" are registered trademarks of IHTSDO. You must have a UMLS Metathesaurus license to access SNOMED CT NL Edition data files. License information is available from NLM (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/healthit/snomedct/snomed_licensing.html).
1.1 Background
This document provides a summarized description of the content changes included in the September 2022 release of the SNOMED Clinical Terms® NL Edition.
It also includes technical notes detailing the known issues which have been identified. 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 document is available as a web resource as well as alongside the September 2022 NL Edition release (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/healthit/snomedct/us_edition.html).
1.2 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. These Release Notes should be used in combination with the SNOMED CT June 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes.
2 Content Development Activity
2.1 Summary
The September 2022 SNOMED CT NL Edition marks the tenth release with content authoring tooling and release production provided by SNOMED International Managed Service. Quality assurance of the release was completed by both NLM and SNOMED International. Additionally, in October 2017, NLM sunset the United States SNOMED CT Content Request System and migrated to the SNOMED International hosted and maintained US CRS (https://us-request.ihtsdotools.org).
2.1.1 September 2022 NL Edition of SNOMED CT Statistics
These statistics include the content from the June 2022 International Edition and the September 2022 NL Edition.
Release | Concept Count | Description Count | Relationship Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| International Edition of SNOMED CT | 494835 | 1565198 | 3230399 |
| NL Edition of SNOMED CT | 503453 | 1588668 | 3294121 |
These statistics include the content from the September 2022 NL Edition.
| Statistics for September 2022 NL Edition of SNOMED CT | |
#total | |
|---|---|
| Number of new active concepts | |
| Number of new active descriptions | |
| Number of new active relationships | |
| Number of newly inactivated concepts | |
| Total number of sufficiently defined concepts | |
| Total number of primitive concepts | |
| Total number of concrete values | |
SNOMED CT derived products
Technical Notes
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.
In addition to the Known Issues reported by the IHTSDO for SNOMED CT International Edition (SNOMED CT June 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes), the following are Known Issues for the SNOMED CT NL Edition that have been identified and will be resolved in the next editing and production cycle:
Resolved Issues
Resolved issues are Known Issues which were not fixed as part of the previous release lifecycle, but which have now been resolved for this September 2022 NL Edition. These can be issues found during the Pre-Production or Production phases of the testing of the current release, which were resolved before the final deployment of the final production release. Finally these can be issues which were reported or found during the testing phase, but which have been closed without any action taken.
In addition to the Resolved Issues reported by the IHTSDO for SNOMED CT International Edition (SNOMED CT June 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes), the following Resolved Issues for the SNOMED CT September 2022 NL Edition:
Technical Updates
In addition to the Technical Updates reported in the following monthly Release Notes:
- SNOMED CT February 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes
- SNOMED CT March 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes
- SNOMED CT April 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes
- SNOMED CT May 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes
- SNOMED CT June 2022 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes
...the following technical updates pertain to the NL Edition:
Notice of changes to the NL Edition Release Package naming convention
From the September 2022 Release of the NL Edition onwards, the RF2 package naming convention will be changing from:
- SnomedCT_Netherlands_EditionRelease_PRODUCTION_[date]T[time]Z.zip
...to the following:
- SnomedCT_ManagedServiceNL_PRODUCTION_NL1000146_[date]T[time]Z.zip
So, for the September 2022 NL Edition Release, for example, the RF2 package would have originally been called:
- SnomedCT_Netherlands_EditionRelease_PRODUCTION_20220930T120000Z.zip
...whereas from now on it will instead be called:
- SnomedCT_ManagedServiceNL_PRODUCTION_NL1000146_20220930T120000Z.zip
Notice of changes to the International Edition Release Schedule
As you may already know SNOMED International have transitioned to a monthly delivery schedule for the International Edition of SNOMED CT. The move towards more frequent releases of SNOMED CT realizes several benefits, including:
- The potential to be able to get content changes into the terminology in a shorter time frame.
- The fostering of better interoperability, as a result of entities being able to consume release content that is more aligned with other organizations.
- The prevention of circular dependencies that occur in longer projects, due to the move towards smaller, more manageable authoring projects.
- More automated validation services, as a result of the inherent removal of the Alpha/Beta stages in the Release cycle.
Whilst most users will continue unaffected (as they can simply continue to download the releases every 6 months as always), this transition will necessarily involve a few changes to process/packages:
- Delta files have been removed from both International and Managed Service release packages, including the Sweden Extension. A Delta Generation service will be provided for those who need it. The Delta Generation Tool allows users to create their own Delta between two fixed release dates - you can find it here:
- The ICD-O/ICD-10 Maps will continue to be published in each Monthly International Edition release package (in line with that month's content) for the foreseeable future, unless we experience issues with the new process in Production, and they need to be removed at a later date.
The first monthly Release of the SNOMED CT International Edition was published on the 28th February 2022 with the Delta files having been removed, and therefore they have been removed from the NL Edition from the September 2022 Release onwards.
Please note - While the SNOMED CT International Edition is moving to monthly releases, the NL Edition of SNOMED CT will remain on the current bi-annual release schedule of March and September.
RF2 package format
Similar to the International Edition, the NL Edition will follow the technical specifications for RF2 packaging format.
For future reference, the RF2 package convention dictates that it contains all relevant files, regardless of whether or not there is content to be included in each particular release. Therefore, the package contains a mixture of files which contain both header rows and content data, and also files that are intentionally left blank (including only a header record). The reason that these files are not removed from the package is to draw a clear distinction between
1 ...files that have been deprecated (and therefore removed from the package completely), due to the content no longer being relevant to RF2 in this or future releases, and
2. ...files that just happen to contain no data in this particular release (and are therefore included in the package but left blank, with only a header record), but are still relevant to RF2, and could therefore potentially contain data in future releases.
This allows users to easily distinguish between files that have purposefully been removed or not, as otherwise if files in option 2 above were left out of the package it could be interpreted as an error, rather than an intentional lack of content in that release.
Feedback and suggestions
We welcome questions, comments or suggestions to improve the quality, accuracy and usability of the SNOMED CT NL Edition. Please send feedback to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Approvals
Final Version | Date | Approver | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Feikje Hielkema-Raadsveld | Approved |
Draft Amendment History
| Version | Date | Editor | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 |
| Andrew Atkinson | Initial draft created |
| 0.1 | Feikje Hielkema-Raadsveld | Draft updates | |
| 1.0 | Andrew Atkinson | Final updates |