event-icon
Description

LOINC® (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes) is a freely available international standard for identifying laboratory and other clinical observations.<font size="1"> </font>Presently, LOINC is used by more than 76,000 users from 175 countries and has been adopted as a national standard in 35 countries. LOINC has been translated into 18 variants of 12 languages and is used by healthcare organizations, reference laboratories, ministries of health and other federal agencies, professional societies, healthcare information exchange networks, insurance companies, healthcare IT vendors, instrument manufacturers, health application developers, and more.2LOINC is now ubiquitous in health data systems worldwide, and is an essential ingredient of system interoperability.

This workshop will cover the basics of LOINC, including: its origin; how it is developed, distributed, and used; and its relationship to other vocabulary and messaging standards such as SNOMED CT and HL7. We will summarize the highlights of global adoption and use cases.

This workshop will explain the LOINC concept model and key features to help users pick out the differences between LOINC terms with subtle but important distinctions. Many informatics professionals are aware of LOINC’s coverage of laboratory tests, which we will explore, but we will also tour its rich content in other domains such as vital signs, clinical document titles, radiology procedures, patient assessment instruments, and patient reported outcomes measures.

This workshop will introduce the key tools and resources available for implementing LOINC. Our primary focus will be on how to get started with LOINC by mapping your local observation codes to LOINC codes. We will briefly describe some secondary uses of LOINC, such as automated electronic laboratory reporting to public health, use in clinical decision support systems, and clinical quality measurement. And last, we will describe some best practices for using LOINC that will prepare the participants for success in the long run.

Learning Objective: After participating in this workshop, attendees will be able to:

1. Explain the LOINC development process
2. Apply key features of the LOINC concept model in selecting appropriate codes
3. Design a query using metadata and relationships about LOINC concepts beyond the concept name
4. Identify and select the key implementation tools appropriate for their use case
5. Apply best practices for using LOINC

Authors:

Daniel Vreeman (Presenter)
Indiana University and Regenstrief Institute, Inc

Swapna Abhyankar (Presenter)
Regenstrief Institute, Inc

Presentation Materials:

Tags