The Production Release of the January 2021 SNOMED CT® International Edition was made available on January 31, 2021.
What’s new?
The January 2021 release contains 3,559 new concepts and 5,413 changes within SNOMED CT’s 350,000+ concepts. The release includes vaccine content to support the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, contributions from Kaiser Permanente’s Convergent Medical Terminology (CMT), Global Medical Device Nomenclature Agency (GMDNA), Orphanet and other domain specific collaborations as well as requests received from submitters via SNOMED International’s Content Request System.
SNOMED CT has added 500 new concepts for the purposes of supporting our Members in their efforts to map from SNOMED CT to ICD-11 and within the imaging domain; specifically, for angiography, SNOMED CT has remodelled 1,400 concepts to improve definitions for radiologists delivering clinical assurance that each concept is properly defined. A prime example of the mature use of SNOMED CT in the research domain, this enhancement provides a better way of searching and finding angiography procedures to support evidence-based decision making.
Within the January 31, 2021 Release, new content associated with project-driven initiatives reflect anatomy changes to support Cancer Synoptic Reporting and the addition of food insecurity concepts to existing Social Determinants of Health content from the consensus-driven standards being developed by the Gravity Project. Additional items that impact each release are updates to the SNOMED CT derived maps such as ICD-10 and ICD-O, the details of which have been included in the January 31, 2021 SNOMED CT International Edition Release Notes.
The January 2021 International Edition Release continues to be produced from the organization’s FHIR-enabled terminology server, Snowstorm, a major technical milestone achieved a year ago and a core focus of the organization’s recently released 2020-2025 organization strategy.
A continued focus on COVID-19 in 2021
As part of the organization’s ongoing global effort as it pertains to the Coronavirus pandemic, SNOMED International has received several requests for new vaccine content as regulators in multiple countries have approved these vaccines.
The January 31, 2021 International Edition Release of SNOMED CT includes 25+ new concepts added to support the vaccination administration process across finding, event, disorder, medicinal product, procedure, and situation hierarchies. All COVID-19 vaccine concepts have also been added to SNOMED International’s freely accessible Global Patient Set. Details about new and existing COVID-19 concepts are available from SNOMED International’s COVID-19 Related Content Page.
With vaccine-related requests and refinements submitted to SNOMED International early in January 2021, it is significant to note that vaccine content was not added to the December 31, 2020 Member Release, but instead to the final reviewed content in the January 31, 2021 Production Release. While being of extremely high importance to users of SNOMED CT globally, these new concepts have been deemed to be of low impact and low risk to the release process.
SNOMED CT’s COVID-19 content and resources
Efforts in 2020 to support health systems globally in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic have included a range of product content, guidance, and collaboration efforts and the following COVID-19 resources, inclusive of our specific January, March and July 2020 International Edition Releases of SNOMED CT, remain available:
- All added COVID-19 descriptions and concepts
- 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
- Participation in the COVID-19 Interoperability Alliance and COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, as well as an open exchange in addressing the pandemic among the ecosystem of health information standards organizations as part of the Joint Initiative Council.
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 January 2021 SNOMED CT International Edition Release is located on our releases page.
If you have any questions about the January 2021 International Edition or have difficulties downloading the files from the distribution site, please contact SNOMED International at support@snomed.org with “January 2021 International Edition Release question” in the subject line.
For general information or inquiries, please contact info@snomed.org.
Access the January 2021 Release & Release Notes
