Regenstrief and SNOMED announce new LOINC and SNOMED CT interoperability
Regenstrief Institute, developer of the LOINC standard, and SNOMED International this week announced their new effort to enable broader healthcare data sharing: the LOINC Ontology.
WHY IT MATTERS
LOINC is used in almost 200 countries worldwide and is available in 20 languages. The standard is designed to identify health measurements and observations and enable the exchange and collection of data between healthcare systems. Short for Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes, it was created at Regenstrief and is free for users.
SNOMED International is a non-profit organization whose mission is to set global standards for health terminology. The SNOMED CT is a comprehensive, multilingual healthcare terminology developed to help healthcare organizations manage patient data in electronic health records, and to facilitate sharing, decision support and analytics to support safe and effective health information exchange.
The two groups say the LOINC Ontology will support providers implementing various combinations of SNOMED CT and LOINC in health information systems. It aims to enable them to meet clinical and regulatory requirements in one solution.
By linking the two standards in a complementary way, the groups say it combines SNOMED CT, which provides the computable framework, with LOINC, which provides laboratory and pathology content in an understandable format to countries that do not use LOINC.
This standardized terminology initiative to facilitate health information exchange provides new opportunities to grow LOINC and SNOMED adoption and significantly improve interoperability between the two standards, which serve an intersecting group of global implementers.
They note that by working together, each organization still retains editorial control over its respective standard. Teams from both groups working on the expansion will meet at the upcoming LOINC conference and at the SNOMED CT Expo, each to be held in Atlanta this year.
THE BIG TREND
LOINC and SNOMED connected in 2022 in a collaboration that laid the foundation for the LOINC extension of SNOMED CT. That agreement was an extension of a 2013 collaboration agreement that linked SNOMED clinical semantics with LOINC observation concepts that enable the identification, exchange and collection of data between healthcare systems.
Both groups highlight the value of their continued collaboration by pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic, which demonstrated the need for coordinated standards to support interoperability and health information exchange.
LOINC version 2.75 published last summer.
ON THE RECORD
“The LOINC Ontology, a LOINC and SNOMED CT interoperability solution, is novel and transformative in delivering clinical observation content in an integrated format and accelerates interoperability and supports stakeholders in meeting clinical, regulatory and administrative requirements,” said Marjorie Rallins, executive director of LOINC and Health Data Standards at Regenstrief, said in a statement.
“Both teams have invested significant effort and collaboration to produce the LOINC ontology preview,” said Don Sweete, CEO of SNOMED International. Sweete further explained, “This serves as an excellent illustration of how we have leveraged our mutual expertise to advance the goal of interoperability for implementers worldwide.”
Mike Miliard is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.