Since the date of issue, this information is now out of date and has been archived. It has been made available for reference.

The Production Release of the January 2022 SNOMED CT® International Edition is now available.

What’s new?

The January 31, 2022 release contains 4,438 new concepts and 1,143 inactivations within SNOMED CT’s 350,000+ concepts. It delivers on SNOMED International’s commitment to make SNOMED CT richer, more precise and more useful to its global users by improving the structural quality of the clinical terminology on an ongoing basis.

Release highlights

Continuous quality improvement and enhancement of existing content is an ongoing process undertaken by SNOMED International in preparation for every release. The January 2022 International Release has seen a continuation of the work driven by contributions from Kaiser Permanente's Convergent Medical Terminology, Global Medical Device Nomenclature Agency, Orphanet and other domain specific collaborations as well as content requests received.  The January 31 2022 release contains additions and changes across many hierarchies including, but not limited to, body structure, clinical findings, procedures, pharmaceutical and biologic products and substances, as well as COVID-19 specific content. 

To support the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, the January 2022 release delivers new COVID-19 related component changes and all the resources provided in the previous year’s releases, including:

• All added COVID-19 descriptions and concepts since July 31 2021:

  • All related descriptions have been updated for all concepts containing “Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” to remove capitalization from ''Severe” (except when it is found at the beginning of the description in accordance with editorial guidance).

  • In addition, “Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2”  is recorded as entire term case insensitive. Our authoritative resource, International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), does not have an entry for viruses below species level and the majority of references, including scientific literature, do not capitalize ”severe.''

• An updated SNOMED CT to ICD-10 map that adheres to the World Health Organization current guidelines

• Guidance for COVID-19 data coding using SNOMED CT based on international Member contributions

• All COVID-19 and related SNOMED CT content added to the freely accessible Global Patient Set

For details on new and existing COVID-19 concepts, please visit SNOMED International’s COVID-19 Related Content Page.

Building on projects and collaborations

This release continues to build on many of SNOMED International’s project-driven and domain-specific collaborations, as well as on requests received from stakeholders. 

Collaborating with Orphanet to improve the visibility of rare diseases in terminologies and promote interoperability among different codification and terminology systems, the January 31, 2022 release contains creation of new concepts for the original set of prioritized rare diseases. All concepts added for the Orphanet project have been mapped to ICD-10 and the Production release of the SNOMED CT to Orphanet Simple Map was published in October 2021.

Collaboration with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has enabled the addition of ~200 nutrition concepts: the majority are located in the observable entity hierarchy and clinical findings hierarchies, and a portion are regime/therapy concepts.

Mapping updates

The map provided for the January 2022 release represents a complete map from SNOMED CT International release to ICD-10 (2016 version) with 1,620 newly authored concepts added and mapped. The SNOMED to ICD-O (morphology) map has had a total of 102 concepts added as a result of review cycles or content requests received.

Produced from Snowstorm

The January 2022 International Edition Release continues to be produced from the organization’s FHIR-enabled terminology server, Snowstorm, a major technical milestone and a core focus of the organization’s 2020-2025 organization strategy.

Upcoming Changes

Over the course of 2021, SNOMED International has communicated its intention to move to a monthly delivery of the International Edition of SNOMED CT. This change will help to realize several benefits, including, but not limited to, the ability to get content changes into the terminology in a shorter time frame, fostering improved interoperability and improving authoring and validation processes. While users will be able to continue to consume SNOMED CT as they currently do to support their business needs, the January 31 2022 release marks the last six-month release by SNOMED International before transitioning to a monthly delivery model starting at the end of February 2022. 

Where can I obtain the SNOMED CT International Edition Release? 

A license is required to download and use SNOMED CT.  In addition to information and resources, the January 2022 SNOMED CT International Edition Release is located on our releases page. For a detailed description of the content changes included in the January 2022 release, please view the SNOMED CT January 2022 International Edition Release Notes.

If you have any questions about the January 2022 International Edition or have difficulties downloading the files from the distribution site, please contact SNOMED International at support@snomed.org with “January 2022 International Edition Release question” in the subject line.

For general information or inquiries, please contact info@snomed.org.