Introduction

Open

The Ministry of Health works with health and disability agencies and their industry partners to develop SNOMED CT® reference sets, maps, language reference sets and other content for digital health solutions in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The SNOMED CT New Zealand Extension packages these components for release every April and October, to be used with the latest designated SNOMED CT International Edition release.

The same content can be viewed online using the SNOMED CT browser and accessed via our standard SNOMED CT terminology service. 

We welcome your feedback and participation. For more information about SNOMED CT implementation in New Zealand, see our website or join our standards channel at forum.hinz.org.nz.

Background

This document provides a summarized description of the content changes included in the April 2022 production release of the SNOMED NZ Extension package.

It will also include technical notes detailing any 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 SNOMED NZ Extension package is dependent upon, and should therefore be consumed in conjunction with the SNOMED CT January 2022 International Edition release.

Content development activity

Summary

Content from the SNOMED CT January 2022 International Edition release has been incremented, using additional components for use in New Zealand. 

The April 2022 release includes updates to the previously released content in the SNOMED CT NZ Extension release and introduces some new content.

New and updated content

Concept statistics

The SNOMED NZ National Release Centre promoted 5 new concepts into the SNOMED CT January 2022 International Edition release.

Table 1. New concepts in the SNOMED International January 2022 release by hierarchy

 Refer to Appendix 1, Table 1.1 to view the 5 new concepts.

There are 213 new concepts in this release.

Table 2. New concepts in the SNOMED NZ Extension April 2022 release by hierarchy

Refer to Appendix 1, Table 2.1 to view the 213 new concepts.

Description statistics 

The SNOMED NZ NRC promoted 1 new descriptions to the SNOMED International Edition January 2022 release.

Table 3. New descriptions in the SNOMED International January 2022 release 

There are 56 new descriptions in this release.

Table 4 New descriptions in the SNOMED NZ Extension April 2022 release

Reference sets

There are 57 reference sets in the April 2022 release.

For more information about New Zealand reference sets, please visit our website.

The New Zealand reference set list is available in Appendix 1, table 3.1.

Language reference sets

Language reference sets are created to define preferred terms and synonyms associated with each concept. There are three language reference sets in the April 2022 release.

Maps

Five maps between SNOMED CT and other code systems are contained in the April 2022 release.

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.  

The following known issues were identified, and agreed to be resolved in the next editing cycle:

Notice of changes to the International Edition Release Schedule

As you may already know SNOMED International are transitioning to a monthly delivery schedule for the International Edition of SNOMED CT. The move towards more frequent releases of SNOMED CT will realize 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 New Zealand 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:

  • https://github.com/IHTSDO/delta-generator-tool/releases

• 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 will be removed from the New Zealand Extension from the April 2022 Release onwards.

Please note - While the SNOMED CT International Edition is moving to monthly releases, the New Zealand Extension of SNOMED CT will remain on the current bi-annual release schedule of April and October for 2022.

Appendix 1

Table 1.1. New concepts in SNOMED CT International Edition January 2022 release