The NHS Information Authority (NHSIA) have revealed more details to E-Health Insider about the abolition of Read Codes in favour of SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), stating that all support calls for Read Codes after January 2006 “will receive a low priority". “SNOMED CT is at the cutting edge of clinical vocabularies and will offer choice and flexibility to all users. Although 4 Byte and Version 2 of the Read Codes were innovative in their time, they no longer meet the demands placed on clinical terminologies by modern medicine supported by integrated electronic environment," a spokesperson said. SNOMED CT, the NHSIA says, is the standard terminology for the NHS Care Records Service, and therefore Read Codes will become obsolete after electronic hospital prescribing goes live on 31 December 2005: “An expiry date has not been set for the final January 2006 release of Read Codes, which will continue as long as data exists with a Read Code in it. However, there will be no further changes or updates made after January 2006." Despite GP systems that use SNOMED CT only being operational in a prototype form, the NHSIA is not anticipating any problems with the transfer: “No major issues are anticipated as Read Codes have a corresponding SNOMED CT code that will enable implementers to migrate coded data. Mapping information is released with the Read Codes and SNOMED CT UK Edition." The NHSIA says that purpose of the consultation, which can be downloaded from http://www.nhsia.nhs.uk/terms/pages/Notice_Read_Codes.pdf, is to receive “the views of all our users at the earliest opportunity to ensure that we can make informed decisions and put in place a migration plan date that will enable suppliers and users of Read Codes to move across to SNOMED CT easily and efficiently in a planned and controlled way." The NHSIA also stressed that the transfer of Read Codes was not a surprise, and had been on the cards for some time; the document “Building the information core: implementing the NHS Plan", from January 2001, advised users/suppliers not to develop new Read Code based systems from April 2003. The document can be downloaded from http://www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/06/69/46/04066946.pdf, and the relevant section is 4.8.
