SNOMED CT Managed Service - Netherlands Edition Release Notes - March 2023
Date | 20230331 |
Document Version | 1.0 |
Release Status | PRODUCTION |
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 January 2023 SNOMED CT International Edition and the NL 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 NL NRC and is available to authorized 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.
Background
This document provides a summarized description of the content changes included in the March 2023 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 March 2023 NL 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. These Release Notes should be used in combination with the SNOMED CT January 2023 International Edition - SNOMED International Release notes.
Changes to the release format
Preceding the previous release of September 2022, our SNOMED NRC changed to a new authoring platform. This necessitated a number of changes in our release. These changes are described in sections 3.3 & 3.4. Please read these sections carefully, as they may require you to change your import script. If you have already made these changes following the September release, then nu further action is required.
National Terminology Server
The National Terminology Server provides an easy method of accessing the latest SNOMED edition in the FHIR R4 format. Using this server is free of charge. More information can be found at https://www.nictiz.nl/standaardisatie/terminologiecentrum/nationale-terminologieserver/ and https://github.com/terminologieserver.
Content Development Activity
Summary
The March 2023 SNOMED CT NL Edition contains content authoring tooling and release production provided by SNOMED International Managed Service. Quality assurance of the release was completed by both the NL NRC and SNOMED International.
March 2023 NL Edition of SNOMED CT Statistics
These statistics include the content from the January 2023 International Edition and the March 2023 NL Edition.
Release | Active Concept Count | Active Description Count | Active Relationship Count |
|---|---|---|---|
NL Edition of SNOMED CT (includes January 2023 International Edition) | 372,629 | 911,846 | 1,293,429 |
NL Extension of SNOMED CT | 13,522 | 911,846 | 83,565 |
These statistics include new content from the March 202 NL Extension.
Statistics for September 2022 NL Edition of SNOMED CT | |
| #total |
|---|---|
Number of new active NL concepts | 106 |
Number of new active descriptions | 42,713 |
Number of new active relationships | 2,943 |
Number of newly inactivated concepts | 94 |
Total number of translated concepts | 287,973 |
SNOMED CT derived products
New reference sets
Reference set | Content | RefsetId |
|---|---|---|
Dutch simple reference set for undefined allergens refset | Reference set consisting of allergens that can not be individually defined. | 260181000146102 |
Dutch laboratory test method simple reference set | Laboratory test methods to be used as complement to a LOINC code, which specify the test method in more detail (e.g. automated vs. manual MIC). | 260131000146101 |
Dutch non-drug allergen simple reference set for Dutch clinical building blocks version 2017 | This temporary reference set has been reactivated especially for the Dutch clinical building blocks version 2017. This reference set contains exactly the same content as 98061000146100 |Dutch total non-drug allergen simple reference set| in order to be able to use the correct content without changing the Dutch clinical building blocks 2017 release. This reference set is valid until the Dutch clinical building blocks 2017 may no longer be used. If at all possible, please use the Dutch total non-drug allergen simple reference set instead (listed below). | 42931000146101 |
Changed reference sets
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
Dutch contact allergen simple reference set | Handpicked set of contact allergens. | 98051000146103 |
Dutch food allergen simple reference set | Handpicked set of food allergens. | 98011000146102 |
Dutch inhalation allergen simple reference set | Handpicked set of inhalation allergens. | 98021000146107 |
Dutch total non-drug allergen simple reference set | Intensional reference set which contains all allergens from our 5 handpicked allergen simple reference sets. | 98061000146100 |
Dutch implant registry simple reference set | Combination of handpicked set and intensional set of implants that need to be delivered to the national implant registry by the hospitals. | 52801000146101 |
Dutch implants reference set - intensional | Intensional set of implants that need to be delivered to the national implant registry by the hospitals. | 117721000146102 |
Dutch simple reference set for ordinal microbial susceptibility test results | List of antimicrobial susceptibility test results, e.g. susceptible or resistant. | 140301000146101 |
Dutch microorganism simple reference set | >4,000 micro-organism concepts for registration in Dutch laboratories. | 2581000146104 |
Dutch pathology simple reference set | Handpicked set of concepts for the Dutch PALGA thesaurus | 110851000146103 |
Dutch nursing intervention for delirium simple reference set | Handpicked set of delirium care interventions. | 110891000146105 |
Dutch nursing intervention simple reference set | Intensional reference set which contains all interventions from the 5 nursing interventions simple reference sets listed below. | 99051000146107 |
Dutch nursing problem simple reference set | Dutch nursing problems which have been translated to Dutch and also possess Dutch textual definitions. | 11721000146100 |
Dutch optometric diagnoses simple reference set | Diagnoses relevant to optometry. | 41000146103 |
Dutch optometric procedures simple reference set | Optometric procedures. | 231000146105 |
SNOMED CT to Omaha correlated extended map reference set of patient problems | Maps the SNOMED CT concepts in the Dutch nursing problem reference set to OMAHA system codes | 32311000146108 |
SNOMED CT to NANDA correlated map reference set of patient problems | Maps the SNOMED CT concepts of the Dutch nursing problem reference set to NANDA codes. | 31451000146105 |
SNOMED CT to ICF correlated extended map reference set of patient problems | Maps the SNOMED CT concepts of the Dutch nursing problem reference set to ICF codes. | 32321000146103 |
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 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.
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:
The following technical updates pertain to the NL Edition:
Notice of changes to the NL Edition Release Package naming convention
Release Package naming convention standardised
Since the September 2022 Release of the NL Edition, the RF2 package naming convention has been standardised to bring it in line with the other extensions in the community, enabling better interoperability. The format has changed from:
to
So, for the March 2023 NL Edition Release, for example, the RF2 package would have originally been called:
But is now called:
Release File naming convention standardised
Since the September 2022 Release of the NL Edition, the File naming convention has been standardised to bring it in line with the other extensions in the community, enabling better interoperability. The format has changed from:
To:
So, for the March 2023 NL Edition Release, for example, the Concept file name would have originally been called:
But is now called:
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:
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:
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 for now on the current bi-annual release schedule of March and September.
RF2 package format
Similar to the International Edition, the NL Edition follows 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.
Changes to the Release Package
Since the September 2022 NL Edition release we have made one change to the release format:
Between the March and September 2022 release, the Dutch SNOMED NRC has changed to a new authoring platform. This has necessitated a number of changes in our releases, which first took effect in September 2022:
For those who previously relied on the package or moduleId to identify which terms are patient-friendly, please note that this approach must have given you incomplete results, and now produces no results at all. We urge you to start using the patient-friendly language reference set. More information can be found at https://www.nictiz.nl/standaardisatie/terminologiecentrum/referentielijsten/inbouwen-snomed-referentieset/, in the SNOMED CT Release File Specifications at http://snomed.org/rfs and in our how-to videos at https://www.nictiz.nl/standaardisatie/terminologiecentrum/trainingsaanbod/.
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 info@snomed.nl.
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