SNOMED CT March 2020 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes
Release Date | 20200309 |
Release Status | INTERIM PRODUCTION RELEASE |
Document Version | 1.0 |
Introduction
Background
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.
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.
Purpose
This document provides a summarized description of the content changes included in the March 2020 INTERIM release of SNOMED Clinical Terms® (SCT) International Release.
It also includes technical notes detailing the known issues which have been identified and agreed to be released. 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.
The SNOMED International Release Notes are available alongside the INTERIM March 2020 International Edition release.
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.
Audience
The audience includes National Release Centers, WHO-FIC release centers, vendors of electronic health records, terminology developers and managers who wish to have an understanding of changes that have been incorporated into the INTERIM March 2020 International Edition release.
Content Development Activity
Summary
This INTERIM International Edition Release has been created as part of the ongoing global effort to tackle the Coronavirus outbreak, and as such includes the updated Coronavirus descriptions for Members and implementers. This is a full International Edition Release package containing changes to the content detailed in the news item (https://www.snomed.org/news-and-events/articles/changes-coronavirus-descriptions) under the following conditions:
- following SNOMED International's critical incident policy, there will NOT be a recall of the January release, simply an update in response to international renaming, to ensure that SNOMED CT is current when assisting with the global Coronavirus effort
- implementers are encouraged to update to the new edition, however, they are NOT obliged to do so as the concept modelling and identifiers are not being modified
- the entirety of these changes will also be incorporated into the upcoming July 2020 International Edition Release
New content added for 2019 novel coronavirus
A set of new components have been added and refined for the March 2020 release:
RF2 file | Number of Changes | Changes for this release | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Description files | 37 | 24 records added, with all 7 Coronavirus concepts having 3x records added each (1x FSN = 2x Synonyms) plus Core concept description added back in referencing March 2020:
Plus 15 records inactivated, with all 7 Coronavirus concepts having 1 description inactivated each, plus the 1 Core concept description record inactivated as still referencing January 2020. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Language refset files | 88 | 16 records updated, with all 16 language refset records from January 2020 being changed from Preferred to Acceptable as part of these changes. Plus 30 records inactivated, due to the inactivation of both language refset records for all 7 original concepts created in January 2020, plus the inactivation of the original January 2020 Core description. Plus 48 records added, with both Language records (EN-GB + EN-US) for each of the 24 new Descriptions above. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Attribute Value files | 15 | 15 records added, due to the inactivations of the descriptions (above). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ExtendedMap files | 3 | 3 records added, due to the ICD-10 map records added for the new Coronavirus content. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ModuleDependency files | 3 | 3 records updated, as expected for March 2020 effectiveTimes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Readme file | March 2020 dates updated + Coronavirus explanations added, as expected | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Concept files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Relationship files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
OwlExpression files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Stated Relationship files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TextDefinition files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SimpleMap files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Simple Refset files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MRCM AttributeDomain files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MRCM AttributeRange files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
MRCM Domain files | 0 | No changes required | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Association Reference files | 0 | No changes required |
SNOMED CT derived products
ICD-10 map
The SNOMED CT to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (© World Health organisation 1994) 2016 Version map (SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map) is included in the SNOMED CT International release as a Baseline. The SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map was created to support the epidemiological, statistical and administrative reporting needs of SNOMED International member countries and WHO Collaborating Centres.
The SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map is released in Release Format 2 (RF2) only. It is located in the file der2_iisssccRefset_ExtendedMapFull_INT_20200309.txt, which is in the Map folder under Refset, in each of the three RF2 Release Type folders.
The SNOMED CT to ICD-10 Map is released as Refset 447562003 |ICD-10 complex map reference set (foundation metadata concept)|.
Content development activity summary
The map is a directed set of relationships from SNOMED CT source concepts to ICD-10 target classification codes. The SNOMED CT source domains for the MAP are limited to subtypes of 404684003 |clinical finding|, 272379006 |event| and 243796009 |situation with explicit context|. The target classification codes are ICD-10 2016 release.
Mapped content for March 2020
The map provided for the March 2020 release has been updated in line with the Coronavirus changes for both the January 2020 and March 2020 International Edition releases:
referencedComponentId | mapAdvice | mapTarget | correlationId | mapCategoryId |
|---|---|---|---|---|
840539006 | ALWAYS U07.1 | POSSIBLE REQUIREMENT FOR ADDITIONAL CODE TO FULLY DESCRIBE DISEASE OR CONDITION | U07.1 | 447561005 | 447637006 |
840546002 | ALWAYS Z20.8 | Z20.8 | 447561005 | 447637006 |
840544004 | MAP SOURCE CONCEPT CANNOT BE CLASSIFIED WITH AVAILABLE DATA | - | 447561005 | 447638001 |
We would welcome feedback on any issues that users of the map may detect when using the map. Issues should be submitted via mapping@snomed.org
Technical Guide Exemplars
The Technical Guide Exemplars document has now been moved from the International Edition release package to a Confluence page. This page can be found as part of the ICD-10 Mapping Technical Guide (see Appendix B), which is hosted here: http://snomed.org/icd10map
ICD-O Map
No changes to the ICD-0 map were required for this Interim release.
SNOMED CT to OWL conversion and classification
The repository containing the toolkit enabling simple SNOMED CT to OWL conversion and classification can be found here, including documentation on its use: https://github.com/IHTSDO/snomed-owl-toolkit
Please contact SNOMED International at support@snomed.org if you would like to provide any feedback on ways to extend and improve the new toolkit.
Copyright © 2026, SNOMED International