New Releases of pCLOCD and SNOMED CT Available

The January 2020 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 2020 release of pCLOCD include:

• 115 edits as a result of pCLOCD maintenance tool migration project, enhanced data quality & integrity
• Changes based on the December 2019 International release of LOINC® include:
  • 60 records have content edits in either English or French
  • 146 Term edits were not identified as R05.11.00_2.67, these edits were based on the added tall man lettering to LOINC parts that were overlooked in the 2.66 release. The tall man lettering for drugs is based on recommendations from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices and ISMP Canada, please see the new list of LOINC Terms with Tall Man Lettering to identify the changes.

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 2020 release of SNOMED CT include:

• 1446 new concepts added to support Clinical finding enhancements
• 467 new concepts added to support Body Structure enhancements
• 223 new concepts added to support the Substances enhancements
• 276 new concepts added to support Pharmaceutical / biologic product enhancements
• 136 new concepts added to support Observable entity enhancements
• 185 new concepts added to support the Organisms enhancements
• 105 new concepts added to support Procedure enhancements
• 206 new concepts supporting: Record Artefacts, Physical Objects, Situation with explicit context, Specimen, SNOMED CT Model Component, Staging and scales, Event, Social context, Qualifier Value and Special concept.
• In the effort to enhance the quality of the terminology, over 46,724 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, ICD-O, Global Medical Device Nomenclature Agency (GMDNA)
• Continuation of Pharmaceutical / biologic product hierarchy redesign for the Drug model project.
• Continuation of Logic Profile Enhancements with the Release of OWL axiom refset files.
• Continuation of Machine Readable Concept Model (MRCM) updates.

Please refer to SNOMED CT January 2020 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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