Survey: dm+d and SNOMED CT UK Drug Extension release cycles

NHS England sought views from users of the dm+d and SNOMED CT UK Drug Extension regarding their release cycles.

The purpose of obtaining views about release timings was to ensure the NHS is meeting user needs, ensuring terminology information is cascaded at times to align with other dependencies and to reduce burden, where possible.

The current release cycle for dm+d is weekly on a Monday. 

The current release cycle for SNOMED CT UK Drug Extension is every 4 weeks on a Wednesday. 

The NHS England and Wales Drug Tariff is published on the 1st of each month. Depending on where dm+d is within its release cycle, there may be a time lag between the Drug Tariff information being available and it being represented in dm+d. 

The Implementation Guide for SCCI0052 (the dm+d information standard) sets out frequencies for when dm+d data must be updated:

Health and care organisations MUST ensure that the dm+d release data is updated at least every 6 months by the next major update, or new procurement, or by 30 June 2017 whichever is sooner. However more frequent updates may be driven by a programme requirement or a specific use case.

The EPS Prescribing System Compliance Specification states:  

The version of the dm+d in use by the system must be no older than 2 months from the latest version of the dm+d as published weekly on the TRUD.

dm+d

dm+d is a dictionary of descriptions and codes which represent medicines and devices in use across the NHS. It must be used when electronic systems exchange or share information about medicines relating directly to a patient's care.

SNOMED CT UK Drug Extension

To support users implementing SNOMED CT structures for clinical terming, NHS England take the core dm+d data (XML file format) and transform it into a fully compliant SNOMED CT release (‘RF2 format’) with added information to support (primarily) secondary care users.

TRUD 

Technology Reference Update Distribution. This is the NHS England web site where the dm+d and SNOMED CT UK Edition data files can be downloaded.

The NHS England Terminology Server

A terminology solution to help healthcare IT systems speak the same language, and make mapping codes between organisations faster and easier.

Quarter 4 2024: User survey regarding dm+d and SNOMED CT UK Drug Extension release cycles

NHS England sought views from users of the dm+d and/or SNOMED CT UK Drug Extension data, to understand preferences for release timings of the 2 terminologies and potential impacts if they were changed. The user survey ran from 11 November to 6 December 2024.

Quarter 1 2025: Outcomes of user survey

NHS England has analysed the survey responses. A summary of the findings are:

• based on user preferences, the release timings of both the dm+d and SNOMED CT UK Drug Extension will remain at their current frequencies
• there is strong interest from users to access a ‘live data feed’ (NHS England Terminology Server) to provide greater alignment and ‘real-time’ data between terminologies and release cycles. NHS England will undertake further engagement to understand what information users need to help them make an informed decision
• a small number of users have requested an additional dedicated Drug Tariff dm+d release to the current weekly releases for the end of each month to support their Drug Tariff data processing. NHS England will undertake further work to understand the feasibility of delivering this

 Further information will be shared once available.

If you would like to discuss this work further, contact [email protected].