Introduction

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SNOMED International has introduced the SNOMED International IPS Terminology release to support the sharing of patient health information coded with SNOMED CT without the need for a SNOMED International license. 

The SNOMED International IPS Terminology release is available to all interested parties at no cost to users. The SNOMED International IPS Terminology release supports health information interoperability across care settings, systems, organizations and national borders.  

The SNOMED International IPS Terminology release is designed to standardize and record as a sub-ontology to facilitate the standardization of the recording of basic medical data that includes the most important clinical information to patient safety and healthcare. The SNOMED CT IPS refset terms have been harmonized with and supports the contents of the HL7 International Patient Summary (HL7 IPS) and CEN's European Standard for the Patient Summary. 

This refset includes a set of SNOMED CT content from the International Release as defined by the scope in 2.1. below. 

This document provides information about the IPS RF2 refset package.  It does not include a discussion or recommendation regarding the broader set of all SNOMED CT terms that are related to the IPS. 

Background

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In 2019, SNOMED International and Health Level Seven International (HL7) announced the formalization of a license agreement in which a relevant "Free for Use" Set of SNOMED CT coded concepts will be used within the HL7 International Patient Summary (HL7 IPS). HL7 is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards developing organization dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing and retrieval of electronic health information that supports clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation of health services. The HL7 IPS is a minimal and non-exhaustive patient summary dataset, specialty-agnostic, condition-independent, but readily usable by clinicians for the cross-border unscheduled care of a patient. The collaboration is consistent with the aims of both organizations to support international harmonization.  

Scope

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An IPS document is an electronic health record extract containing essential healthcare information for use in the unscheduled, cross-border care scenario, as well as for local, regional and other care scenarios.

The SNOMED International IPS Terminology release is international in scope and in addition to harmonization with HL7 IPS, is aligned with CEN's European Standard for the Patient Summary. The IPS free set consists of more than 8,000 SNOMED CT terms for use in implementations of the HL7 CDA R2 and FHIR IPS Implementation Guides world-wide. The SNOMED CT IPS contains concepts that can record the following data: 

• General information about the patient (e.g., gender)
• Medical summary of most important clinical data (e.g., allergies, current medical problems, major surgical procedures)
• A list of current medications

Use cases:

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Content

The SNOMED International IPS Terminology release primarily contains concepts that can be used to record general information about the patient, medical summary of the most important clinical patient data, and a list of the current medication the patient is taking. ???????????????????

Design

Version

The dependent version of SNOMED CT is the March 2022 International Edition release.

Ownership

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Frequency

The first BETA version of the SNOMED International IPS Terminology release was published after the March 2022 International Edition release of SNOMED CT.  Subsequently it is currently planned to be maintained annually.

Obtaining the Release

The SNOMED International IPS Terminology release is downloadable from the following page on the SNOMED International website:

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The URI for the SNOMED International IPS Terminology release will take the following format:

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Feedback

Please provide feedback on usage of, or potential improvements to this refset to info@snomed.org with "IPS Terminology Release" in the subject box.

Implementation

The SNOMED International IPS Terminology release User Guide provides information on downloading the package and considerations for its use.  A PDF version of the SNOMED International IPS Terminology release User Guide is available online:

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Technical Notes

Package format

Please note that this product is NOT published in a standard RF2 package convention.  Instead, it is produced as a SNAPSHOT only package, containing only the populated Snapshot files of those components containing pertinent content.  

If you would like to use the full RF2 content, please contact SNOMED International at support@snomed.org in order to obtain the full version of SNOMED CT.