New Releases of pCLOCD and SNOMED CT Available

The January 2019 versions of pan-Canadian LOINC Observation Code Database (pCLOCD) and Systematized NOmenclature of MEDicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT®) are now available for review and implementation accessible from Terminology Gateway.

Content highlights for the January 2019 release of pCLOCD include:

• 24 new codes were added as a result of requests from Quebec & Saskatchewan
• Changes based on the December 2018 International release of LOINC® include:
  • 250 records have content edits in either English or French
  • 77 records were deprecated this release, mapping guidance has been provided

Links to pCLOCD documentation is on the LOINC and pCLOCD Standards page under Implementation Guidelines and Resources.

Please refer to the specific pCLOCD Release Notes. These notes are intended to accompany the release to provide further information on specific additions and changes that have been incorporated into this release.

Content highlights for the January 2019 release of SNOMED CT include:

• 7986 new concepts added to support Pharmaceutical / biologic product enhancements
• 2114 new concepts added to support Clinical finding enhancements
• 442 new concepts added to support Body Structure
• 393 new concepts added to support Procedure enhancements
• 326 new concepts added to support the Organisms
• 223 new concepts added to support the Substances redesign
• 135 new concepts added to support the Qualifier Value enhancements
• 284 new concepts supporting: Record Artefacts, Physical Objects, Observable entity, Situation with explicit context, Specimen, SNOMED CT Model Component, Staging and scales, Event, Social context and Special concept.
• In the effort to enhance the quality of the terminology, over 72,376 changes were made to existing content, those changes cover changes to concept definitions, description changes, concept definition status changes from Primitive to Sufficiently Defined, inactivation of descriptions and concepts.
• Update to the SNOMED CT to ICD-10 map
• Ongoing maintenance of the Controlled Medical Terminologies (CMT) Subsets and on the Collaboration efforts: LOINC - SNOMED, Orphanet, ICD-11, International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®), Global Medical Device Nomenclature Agency (GMDNA)
• Continuation of Pharmaceutical / biologic product hierarchy redesign for the Drug model project. The changes included in this release: Clinical drug (CD) concepts, Medicinal product additional codes and editorial guidelines enhancements, Groupers based on disposition and/or structure, Liposome modifications and role. Additional content added to support the National Extension model.
• Logic Profile Enhancements: Release of partial OWL expression refset, documentation and links supporting the initiative. Toolkit to support SNOMED CT to OWL conversion and classification.
• Machine Readable Concept Model (MRCM): 6 new MRCM rules and 3 updates to the existing MRCM

Please refer to SNOMED CT January 2019 International Release Notes that accompany the release for further information on specific additions and changes incorporated into this release.

Requests for change to these terminology standards should be made via Infoway’s request for change management system, InfoRMS, which is accessible once you have logged into your Infoway account.

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