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SNOMED CT Managed Service - Switzerland Extension PRODUCTION Release Notes - December 2023

SNOMED CT Managed Service - Switzerland Extension PRODUCTION Release Notes - December 2023

2023-Dec-07



Date

20231207

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 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 Switzerland Extension - packages these components for release every December and July, to be used with the latest SNOMED CT International Edition release.

The same content can be viewed online using the SNOMED CT browser.



Background

This document provides a summarized description of the content changes included in the December 2023 Production release of the SNOMED Clinical Terms® Managed Service Switzerland Extension package.

It will also include technical notes detailing the known issues which have been identified (should any of these exist). 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 Switzerland Extension package is dependent upon, and should therefore be consumed in conjunction with, the SNOMED CT® November 2023 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.



Content Development Activity

Summary

Content from the SNOMED CT® November 2023 International Edition release has been included, alongside additional components for use in Switzerland. 

This extension contains concepts, relationships and reference sets for healthcare professionals. 

New and Updated Content

This release contains translations from the Common French Translation and Common German Translation.

Changes since the last release:

Description files (FR-CH)

  • 9'966 new or updated records were added.

  • 1'689 records were inactivated.

Language files (FR-CH)

  • 10'054 new or updated records were added.

  • 3'147 records were inactivated.

Description files (DE-CH)

  • 6'470 new or updated records were added.

  • 14 records were inactivated.

Language files (DE-CH)

  • 6'458 new or updated records were added.

  • 14 records were inactivated.

Description files (IT-CH)

  • 2'108 new or updated records were added.

  • 6 records were inactivated.

Language files (IT-CH)

  • 2'125 new or updated records were added.

  • 6 records were inactivated.

OWLExpression files

11 new or updated records were added.
0 records were inactivated.

Attribute Value files

  • 2'349 new or updated records were added.

  • 0 records were inactivated.

Association Reference files

  • 11 new or updated records were added.

  • 0 records were inactivated.

moduleDependency files

  • 22 new or updated records were added.

  • 0 records were inactivated.



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.  

For the SNOMED CT Managed Service - Switzerland Extension Release, the following Known Issues were identified, and agreed to be resolved in the next editing cycle:

key summary description priority
Refresh

Resolved Issues

Resolved Issues are those where the resolution has been discussed and agreed, and has been implemented in time for this release. 

For the SNOMED CT Managed Service - Switzerland Extension Release, the following Issues were Resolved: 

Changes to the Identifier file format

In line with the proposals documented here:  https://confluence.ihtsdotools.org/mag/snomed-international-proposal-to-change-the-rf2-identifier-file-specification - the Switzerland Extension Release will from now on include the following changes to the format of the Identifier files:

  • < identifierSchemeId    alternateIdentifier    effectiveTime    active    moduleId    referencedComponentId           ...to

  • > alternateIdentifier    effectiveTime    active    moduleId    identifierSchemeId    referencedComponentId

These improvements are introduced in the December 2023 Switzerland Extension release, and will be used in all future Switzerland Extension releases until further notice.



Notice of changes to the Switzerland Extension Release package

With the adaptation of the Swiss extension in the June release to include the common French and German content, the "fr_CH" file has become obsolete. All French translations are now in the "fr_ch_CH" file.

Since this change, the "fr_CH" file is empty and no longer needed. For this reason, these files will be removed from the release package and will not be included in the Switzerland Extension release package from the December 2023 release onwards:

  • der2_cRefset_LanguageFull-fr_CH1000195_20231207.txt

  • der2_cRefset_LanguageSnapshot-fr_CH1000195_20231207.txt

  • sct2_Description_Full-fr_CH1000195_20231207.txt

  • sct2_Description_Snapshot-fr_CH1000195_20231207.txt

  • sct2_TextDefinition_Full-fr_CH1000195_20231207.txt

  • sct2_TextDefinition_Snapshot-fr_CH1000195_20231207.txt

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 Switzerland Extension.  A Delta Generation service has been 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 continues 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 Delta files were also removed from the Switzerland Extension from the June 2022 Release onwards.

Please note - While the SNOMED CT International Edition is moving to monthly releases, the Switzerland Extension of SNOMED CT will remain on the current bi-annual release schedule of June and December for 2023.



 

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