Deprecation of antecedent (old) SNOMED works

Hello everyone

First of all thanks again to everyone for travelling all the way to London, and contributing so effectively to a great couple of face to face meetings - we got a lot agreed and it really enabled us to further the continuous improvements that we're all working so hard to implement.  

As promised, I just had a call with our legal representation, to discuss the implications of inactivating the SNOMED identifier refset in all future International Edition packages, rather than removing it in its entirety.  This would be done to better align ourselves with the RF2 standard of retaining all history of changes to content.

Unfortunately, they have confirmed that by its very inclusion in the International Edition package (even inactivated) we are continuing to implicitly licence the SNOMED Identifier refset, we would be significantly increasing the risk of legal liability due to unauthorised use of the unlicensed content. 

It was therefore decided that the best practice approach has to be the removal of the SNOMED Identifier refset in its entirety, rather than merely inactivating the content.

So we now how an urgent question for your consideration, with respect to the cleanest way to extricate it from the international edition:

1. There are 432,470 simpleMap records mapped to the RT Refset (900000000000498005).  This is expected, as this matches the total number of Concepts (minus one for the GMDN map concept to which RT wasn't mapped).  There are also, however, two additional records in the simpleMap file which reference the RT Refset, though not in the refsetID column, but instead in the referencedComponentID column:

   1. 1. 82f3de7e-e15a-56c2-80a7-8ba824b9bd8e 20020131 1 900000000000207008 900000000000497000 900000000000498005 XUjjk

      2. d9de6ab2-2243-56cb-9003-de0764f0236d 20020131 1 900000000000207008 900000000000498005 900000000000498005 R-5004A

   
   Once of these is the mapping of the CTV3 Refset (900000000000497000), and the other appears to be a circular reference to itself!  So the question now is whether or not we remove these records from the simpleMap, in addition to the 432,470 records?
   
   
   

2. Also, should we surgically remove the supporting RT Refset metadata, such as the Concept (900000000000498005) and Descriptions, etc - thus creating a standalone static package for antecedent works?  Or do we simply remove the 432,470 simpleMap records into a separate package, and leave the supporting metadata in the International edition, meaning that the static package will forever remain dependent upon the International edition?

Thanks very much again for all of your help!

Kind regards,

Andrew

It seems to makes the most sense to keep the inactive refset metadata in the release. Having the appropriate metadata to reflect the refset existed would be best practices for historical reasons. While we are removing the refset data from the release where we can at least document why this has been done, removing the metadata would seem like we are removing the knowledge of the refest ever existed. But by continuing to keep the metadata there, we at least keep some nod to the fact that the refset was part of the release. Is it wrong that the inactivated (standalone) refset would still be dependent on the international edition? It seems like this is actually the correct way to historically track this retired refset. 

Thanks Suzy - I totally agree, I think the metadata leaves an appropriate historical audit trail, without leaving any of the potentially clinically unsafe content in the International Edition where it creates additional risk.

If everyone else feels the same, then this is absolutely my preferred approach, and so will action accordingly in the July release.

Thanks,

Andrew