SNOMED CT Important Description Logic Enhancements

If your SNOMED CT implementation requires classification or rely on relationships and subsumptions, you may be affected by the coming changes.

To lean more about the SNOMED CT important description logic enhancements, you are invited to attend the next Health Terminologies Community meeting on February 19. Guillermo Reynoso, Director of Terminology Services at TermMed and a SNOMED International Certified Consultant Terminologist will explain the changes, how these changes will impact existing implementations, if stakeholders will have access to converting tools and how should one transition from current to future state…

Here is the meeting information.

Hi,
I have received many request for clarification, impacts and transition steps. I am trying to schedule a meeting to present and discuss this topic. Will keep you posted.

Hi Linda,

Thank you for the info. I suggest we have a discussion during an upcoming community meeting to understand how these changes impact existing implementations. Will SNOMED CT provide the process, tools for converting from the current data model to the new model? I agree that change is necessary and cannot be avoided, but we need to provide also a transition path.

Hi Linda,
Thanks for sharing this info. This is very helpful.

To enable improvements to the quality and analytics capabilities of SNOMED CT, SNOMED International is enhancing the underlining logic profile of the terminology. The changes require expressing the concept definitions using Web Ontology Language (OWL). These expressions will be published as an RF2 compliant reference set, replacing the stated relationships file. It is planned that the stated relationships file will be deprecated in the July 2019 International release.

You may be affected by the coming changes if your implementation requires classification or rely on relationships and subsumptions. In fact, the changes being introduced expand the Description Logic features used to define concepts in SNOMED CT. These changes affect the RF2 distribution format, and particularly the stated and inferred relationships file content and interpretation.

As of the July 2019 release of SNOMED CT, the stated relationships file will be inactivated and replaced by one OWL expression refset. The profile for the extended set of features SNOMED CT will use is defined at snomed.org/lps.

While the stated relationship file is still present and individual concept definitions do not yet use extended features, the content of the inferred relationships file will be affected in the January 2019 release. Any implementations performing subsumption testing based on the distributed inferred relationship file may be affected and should be reviewed and carefully tested prior to upgrading.

Click here to learn more about the planned changes.

If you believe your system may be affected by this change, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to get further assistance to determine if your system is impacted.