Standardizing Laboratory Data by Mapping to LOINC

The authors describe a pilot project to standardize local laboratory data at five Indian Health Service (IHS) medical facilities by mapping laboratory test names to Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC). An automated mapping tool was developed to assign LOINC codes. At these sites,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 353 - 355
Main Authors:	Khan, Agha N., Griffith, Stanley P., Moore, Catherine, Russell, Dorothy, Rosario, Arnulfo C., Bertolli, Jeanne
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	England Elsevier Inc 01-05-2006 Oxford University Press American Medical Informatics Association
Subjects:	Clinical Laboratory Techniques - classification Clinical Laboratory Techniques - standards Laboratories Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes Original Investigations Pilot Projects United States United States Indian Health Service United States
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Summary:	The authors describe a pilot project to standardize local laboratory data at five Indian Health Service (IHS) medical facilities by mapping laboratory test names to Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC). An automated mapping tool was developed to assign LOINC codes. At these sites, they were able to map from 63% to 76% of the local active laboratory tests to LOINC using the mapping tool. Eleven percent to 27% of the tests were mapped manually. They could not assign LOINC codes to 6% to 19% of the laboratory tests due to incomplete or incorrect information about these tests. The results achieved approximate other similar efforts. Mapping of laboratory test names to LOINC codes will allow IHS to aggregate laboratory data more easily for disease surveillance and clinical and administrative reporting efforts. This project may provide a model for standardization efforts in other health systems.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 The authors thank their colleagues in the five Indian Health Service facilities that participated in the pilot phase of this project: Albuquerque Indian Hospital, Rapid City PHS Sioux San Indian Hospital, Ignacio PHS Indian Health Center, Phoenix Indian Medical Center, and W. W. Hastings Indian Hospital. They also thank Russell Pitman, Patrick Beatty, and Tim Frazier from IHS and Lori Butcher and Mark Williams from Cimarron Medical Informatics.
ISSN:	1067-5027 1527-974X
DOI:	10.1197/jamia.M1935