Following the announcements earlier this year regarding the proposal to increase the character limit for Descriptions, we would like to remind the community that the deadline for feedback on the proposal is 31st December 2024.
Please see the original proposal here, and provide any feedback via the form before the deadline:
- https://www.snomed.org/news/blog%3A-snomed-international-seeks-community-feedback-on-proposed-description-character-limit-increase
- https://confluence.ihtsdotools.org/display/mag/SNOMED+International+Proposal+to+Increase+Description+Length+Limit
Please note the following key points to consider and feed back on:
- Some of the feedback so far has suggested users may need 12 months to prepare for the change, and therefore the current planned transition date would be January 2026.
- Thus far, no use case for this length increase has yet been identified for the International Edition outside of the Medicinal Product Hierarchy.
- In addition to this, whilst the limit would increase to a maximum of 4096 characters, there is no current intention to increase any actual terms much beyond the existing 255 characters - the maximum so far proposed was not even 400 characters in length, and would therefore present no clinical safety risk for user interfaces, etc.
- For example:
- id effectiveTime active moduleId conceptId languageCode typeId term caseSignificanceId
- 5089025013 20240505 1 900000000000207008 1162634005 en 900000000000003001 Pediatric vaccine product containing only acellular Bordetella pertussis antigen and Clostridium tetani toxoid antigen and Corynebacterium diphtheriae toxoid antigen and Haemophilus influenzae type b capsular polysaccharide conjugated antigen and Hepatitis B virus and inactivated whole Human poliovirus antigen (medicinal product) 900000000000020002
- id effectiveTime active moduleId conceptId languageCode typeId term caseSignificanceId
- For example:
We will publish the results of the consultation once it is complete, and confirm timelines for the transition.
Kind regards
Andrew Atkinson | Release Manager