Introduction

SNOMED International has introduced the Global Patient Set (GPS) to support the sharing of patient health information coded with SNOMED CT without the need for a SNOMED International license. 

The GPS is a managed list of existing SNOMED CT unique concept identifiers and their associated descriptions and will be available to all interested parties at no cost to users. The GPS supports health information interoperability across care settings, systems, organizations and national borders.  

Implementation

The SNOMED International GPS Implementation Guide provides information on downloading the GPS and considerations for its use.  A PDF version of the SNOMED International GPS Implementation Guide is included in the GPS release package - however to ensure that the latest version can be accessed, it's also available online:

https://confluence.ihtsdotools.org/display/RMT/SNOMED+International+Global+Patient+Set+%28GPS%29+package+Implementation+Guide+-+2024

Release content

Frequency of Release

The GPS package contains the content of a number of SNOMED CT reference sets to support a variety of general purposes, and is published annually.

Changes to the GPS Release content

Changes to the content of the GPS release package each cycle will reflect updates to the underlying terminology, including concept inactivations and additions.  For this reason, details of changes made to this release can be found in the Release Notes for the underlying SNOMED CT reference sets that are used to compile the GPS.

From the July 2020 GPS Release onwards, SNOMED International have also published an RF2 formatted package containing the GPS refset content.  This Refset follows normal RF2 conventions, and therefore retains a full historical audit trail of all changes to the GPS refset from that point onwards.

Significant changes:  COVID-19

SNOMED CT concepts have been created and added to the GPS so that these codes are globally available to all implementers. Details on the SNOMED CT concepts included can be found here - http://snomed.org/covid-19

Obtaining the GPS package

The GPS is downloadable from the following page on the SNOMED International website:

http://www.snomed.org/snomed-international/learn-more/global-patient-set

If you would like to obtain the full version of SNOMED CT through membership or an affiliate license, please visit

https://www.snomed.org/snomed-ct/get-snomed

Technical Notes

 RF2 package format

The GPS Freeset is released in TSV (Tab Separated Values) file format, with the following naming convention:

• SnomedINTL_GPSRelease_PRODUCTION_[date and time stamp].zip

The GPS RF2 Refset is released in RF2 file format, with the following naming convention:

• SnomedCT_GPS_PRODUCTION_[date and time stamp].zip

Please be aware that the RF2 refset contains records with the GPS specific moduleID (890195008) + refsetID (787778008) allocated to them all, regardless of the concepts origin in the various GPS feeder refsets.  This is because there are several thousand concepts that exist across multiple feeder refsets, and therefore it would prove confusing from a user-perspective to choose one module/refset combination over another without any apparent reason.

Inactive Content

Due to the historical features of the RF2 format, we are able to include inactive content in the GPS Refset product.  This means that any concepts inactivated since the previous GPS release will be included in the GPS RF2 files, with a status of "active=0".   The inactive content will not be included in the GPS Freeset deliverable, as this has no mechanism for retaining historical content.

This inactive content should be used entirely at the users own risk, as these concepts have been inactivated for clinical or editorial validity reasons and are therefore considered as obsolete by SNOMED International.  They are therefore no longer maintained, and as such should not be used in Production clinical systems or in clinical settings.

RF2 Delta files removed from the package

Delta files have been removed from both International and Managed Service release packages, and are now being removed from all Derivative products in line with this new Standard.

The Delta files have therefore been removed from the 2022 GPS Release package onwards.  Please contact support@snomed.org if you have any questions about these improvements.

Dependent content input into the package

Due to load-balancing of Derivative products across the year, the dependent products that are used as input into the GPS Release package will now be taken from different cycles.  So, taking the July 2023 GPS package as an example, whilst the DICOM and IPS feeder refsets will still be based upon July 2023 International content, the ICNP and GP/FP refsets have now been moved to the January cycle, and will therefore not be updated until January 2024 (and the feeder data for this GPS release will therefore be from their last published date in 2022).  This will not have a significant impact on the content of the GPS release, other than that there will be some additional concepts (approximately 70 in this cycle) included in the July 2023 GPS release that would otherwise have been removed, due to them having been inactivated in the International content since the feeder sets were last published in 2022.