The July 2021 SNOMED CT International Edition Release is now available

The July 31, 2021 release contains 4,468 new concepts and 8,813 inactivations within SNOMED CT’s 350,000+ concepts.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, July 30, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Production Release of the July 2021 SNOMED CT^® International Edition is now available.

What’s new?
The July 31, 2021 release contains 4,468 new concepts and 8,813 inactivations within SNOMED CT’s 350,000+ concepts. It delivers on SNOMED International’s commitment to make SNOMED CT richer, more precise and more useful to its global users by improving the structural quality of the clinical terminology on an ongoing basis.
 
Release highlights
The first release reflecting the transition to Concrete Domains, which was previewed in the January 31, 2021 International Edition, the July 31 2021 release contains drug concept strengths and counts expressed as concrete values, which enables users to better express strengths and concentrations of clinical drugs as well as ingredient counts. More details on this transition are provided in the July 31 2021 Release Notes.
 
To support the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, this release includes 34 COVID-19 vaccine-related component changes and all the resources provided in the previous year’s releases, including:
- All added COVID-19 descriptions and concepts since January 31 2021
- An updated SNOMED CT to ICD-10 map
- Guidance for COVID-19 data coding using SNOMED CT based on international Member contributions
- All COVID-19 and related SNOMED CT content added to the freely accessible Global Patient Set

For details on new and existing COVID-19 concepts, please visit SNOMED International’s COVID-19 Related Content Page.
 
Building on past projects and collaborations
This release continues to build on many of SNOMED International’s project-driven and domain-specific collaborations, as well as on requests received from stakeholders. New concepts were recently added to support the SNOMED CT to International Classification for Nursing Practice equivalence product and to support Social Determinants of Health and cancer synoptic reporting. 
 
Working in collaboration with Orphanet to improve the visibility of rare diseases in terminologies and promote interoperability among different codification and terminology systems, the July 31, 2021 release contains new concepts for the agreed upon original set of prioritized rare diseases. All of the concepts added for the Orphanet project have been mapped to ICD-10. The SNOMED CT to Orphanet Simple Map is set to be published in October 2021 and will be based on the July 2021 International release of SNOMED CT.
 
Mapping updates
The map provided for the July 31, 2021 release now represents a complete map from SNOMED CT International release to ICD-10 (2016 version): 2,192 newly authored concepts have been added and mapped, and three new codes for special purposes have been added to the terminology browser in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines. This release also reflects maintenance activity for concepts related to the Global Medical Device Nomenclature Agency map.
 
Produced from Snowstorm
The July 2021 International Edition Release continues to be produced from the organization’s FHIR-enabled terminology server, Snowstorm, a major technical milestone and a core focus of the organization’s 2020-2025 organization strategy.
 
SURVEY: Upcoming Changes
SNOMED International has published the SNOMED CT International Edition every six months, on January 31 and July 31, each year.  SNOMED International is now planning on transitioning to a more frequent delivery schedule of the SNOMED CT International Release Package. To better understand the impact of the proposed model, we are asking SNOMED CT users to complete a survey, available here. The survey will be available from July 31 to September 12, 2021, but early responses are greatly appreciated.
 
Where can I obtain the SNOMED CT International Edition Release? 
A license is required to download and use SNOMED CT.  Information and resources pertaining to the July 2021 SNOMED CT International Edition Release is located on our releases page. For a summarized description of the content changes included in the July 2021 release, please view the SNOMED CT July 2021 International Edition Release Notes.
 
If you have any questions about the July 2021 International Edition or have difficulties downloading the files from the distribution site, please contact SNOMED International at support@snomed.org with “July 2021 International Edition Release question” in the subject line.
 
For general information or inquiries, please contact info@snomed.org. 

Kelly Kuru
SNOMED International
comms@snomed.org
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