Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Coders (LOINC): New Software System May Aid in the Goal of Efficiency for Health Care

LOINC stands for Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes and it is a database that is used to facilitate the exchange and pooling of results, such as blood hemoglobin, serum potassium, or vital signs, for clinical care, outcomes management, and research (http://www.regenstrief.org/loinc). LOINC was created to help assist laboratory and other diagnostic care services solve the problem of identifying test results. Apparently, some laboratories and diagnostic services use HL7 to send their results electronically from their reporting systems to their care systems.

Most of them identify the tests in messages by using their internal and idiosyncratic code values. Thus, the care system cannot fully "understand" and properly file the results they receive unless they either adopt the producer's laboratory codes (which is impossible if they receive results from multiple sources), or invest in the work to map each result producer's code system to their internal code system (http://www.regenstrief.org/loinc).

The company that maintains the LOINC database and its supporting documentation is called the Regenstrief Institute [www.regenstrief.org] (http://www.regenstrief.org/loinc). LOINC is a voluntary effort housed in the Regenstrief Institute for Health Care, an internationally respected non-profit medical research organization associated with Indiana University. LOINC system was initiated in 1994 by the Regenstrief Institute and developed by Regenstrief and the LOINC committee as a response to the demand for electronic movement of clinical data from laboratories that produce the data to
hospitals, physician's offices, and payers who use the data for clinical care and management purposes (http://www.regenstrief.org/loinc/background/).

The clinical portion of the LOINC database includes entries for vital signs, hemodynamics, intake/output, EKG, obstetric ultrasound, cardiac echo, urologic imaging, gastroendocscopic procedures, pulmonary ventilator management, selected survey instruments, and other clinical observations (http://www.regenstrief.org/loinc). Some of the advances that LOINC offers in the database are as follows:

• The LOINC laboratory terms set provides a standard set of universal names and codes for identifying individual laboratory and clinical results.
• LOINC codes allow users to merge clinical results from many sources into one database for patient care, clinical research, or management.
• The LOINC database currently contains about 41,000 observation terms.
• Nearly 31,000 of these observational terms relate to laboratory testing (http://www.regenstrief.org/loinc/background).

The Regenstrief Institute is committed to the improvement of health care delivery. This is shown by its 25 year dedication to the research and study of health care on the campus of the Indiana University School of Medicine (the institute's location). It is an internationally recognized informatics and healthcare research organization dedicated to the improvement of health through research that enhances the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care (http://www.regenstrief.org/background/).