Blog from April, 2021

London, United Kingdom and Geneva, Switzerland

April 29, 2021

SNOMED International and the International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) are announcing the release of important new maps between global medical terminologies SNOMED CT and MedDRA. This collaborative effort is the first deliverable of a new agreement entered into between SNOMED International and ICH.

This joint effort has produced two independent maps (MedDRA to SNOMED CT and SNOMED CT to MedDRA) which have been derived from frequently used and key pharmacovigilance MedDRA terms identified from the European Medicines Agency and the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.  In addition, a set of COVID-19 related terms are also included in the first production release of the maps to capture important aspects of the pandemic.

Read the full press release

For more information on the agreement or the maps, contact info@snomed.org.

Posted on behalf of Don Sweete, CEO, SNOMED International

First, I would like to extend my thanks to you for the unprecedented participation at last week’s Business Meetings. While it can never replace in-person collaboration, the SNOMED CT community continues to demonstrate its ongoing commitment.

As part of our discussions at last week’s Business Meetings, SNOMED International has made the decision to deliver the October 2021 Business Meetings and SNOMED CT Expo as entirely virtual events. Although we were all looking forward to seeing each other after this extended period of separation, the health and well-being of our Members, the broader SNOMED CT community, employees and other stakeholders is paramount. 

We are confident we are acting in the best interests of our global community.

The good news is that this gives us the opportunity to build on the success of last year’s virtual Expo, which saw record attendance and received rave reviews from attendees. Our experience with hosting both last year’s Expo and last week’s Business Meetings equips us with the insights we need to provide an even more impactful conference experience for attendees and presenters in October.

Holding a fully virtual event also enables a much broader audience to participate than typically would attend in person, as we saw last year. Capturing sessions and making them available for continued viewing gives us an even greater potential reach.

We have extended our deadline to accept abstracts for the Expo until May 7, 2021, so I encourage you to reach out to your colleagues you think might be interested and ask them to consider submitting. For inspiration, view the video on our Expo site profiling four of last year’s presenters talking about why they submitted and how presenting benefitted them and their organizations.

SNOMED International thanks you for your ongoing commitment, 

Don Sweete

Posted on behalf of Don Sweete, CEO, SNOMED International

I'd like to personally welcome you to the start of the April 2021 Business Meetings. While our meeting is once again virtual, there is a wealth of activity taking place over the next 4 days, satisfying the governance and advisory aspects of an in-person business meeting. 

Remember that you can locate the schedule of these governance, advisory, project and clinical reference group meetings via the event registration page or within the platform itself.

Accessing Sessions: 

All registered attendees will have received a personalized email on Friday, and again Monday with your credentials for the platform supporting the business meetings. This includes an auto entry link to the Business Meetings platform, which is the easiest way to gain entry. In the event of issues, this email also includes your login and PIN. 

Forgot to register? Please register here and you will receive your entry credentials via email. If you experience issues, please contact events@snomed.org immediately for support.Please explore the new platform for enhanced networking opportunities with your SNOMED CT community.   

Business Meeting Highlights:

Governance

This April's Open General Assembly on Tuesday April 20, 12:00 - 14:00 UTC, will commence with keynote speaker, Dr. Tom Hughes and his presentation on the NHS Emergency Care Data Set. In the meeting to follow, General Assembly representatives of the organization are presented with and vote on SNOMED CT statutory matters. 

Closed meetings of the General Assembly, Management Board, and Member Forum round out the Governance meetings this week.   

Advisory, Project and Clinical Meetings:

Advisory & Project
Modeling, Content Managers, Terminology Release, Editorial, and E-Learning comprise the Advisory Group element of the schedule.  The Managed Service User Group, a sub-group of the Tooling User Advisory Group, is also scheduled to meet. Project Groups meeting include Observables, French Translation, SNOMED on FHIR, Cancer Synoptic Reporting and SNOMED CT Computable Languages. 

Clinical
In addition to Anesthesia, Mental & Behavioural Health, Nutrition Care Process, Dentistry, Nursing, and Genomics & Precision Medicine Clinical Reference Group meetings, the Clinical Engagement group has organized a "SNOMED for Clinicians" session on Thursday April 22nd. Featured keynote speaker, Dr. Tejal Shah, Lecturer at the School of Computing at Newcastle University, will share her clinical experiences implementing SNOMED CT. 

Refer to the full program here

Community Updates:

To brief the Community on the activities of the organization and Membership since October 2020, we have shared a Community Updates document for your review and reference. Please reach out to the respective subject matter experts of the organization with your queries at the meetings this week, or directly via info@snomed.org. 

I extend my thanks for your ongoing contributions and support and I look forward to seeing you this week. 

• Don