LOINC 2.26, released: January 10, 2009

RELMA 3.25, released: January 10, 2009

LOINC and RELMA User's Guides: January 2009

New Features

New LOINC Content

LOINC version 2.26 contains 53,344 terms, an increase of 932 since the July 2008 version. Approximately 1,100 terms have been edited.  A total of 1,426 terms have been deprecated.

This release includes a new field called LONG_COMMON_NAME, which is displays the LOINC term with a name in more user-friendly English.

New content in this release includes more Newborn Screening tests, sets of terms used in HEDIS, US Surgeon General's Family Health History tool, and Continuity Assessment Record and Evaluation (CARE) terms.

We have also now released exports of the LOINC Multiaxial-Hierarchy, selected LOINC Panels/Forms, and a template format for context-specific hierarchies.

New RELMA Features

1. RELMA is now available in separate downloads that contain an additional word index in Spanish or Simplified Chinese that allows searching in these languages in addition to English.
   
2. RELMA now uses Microsoft's .NET technology. .NET is Microsoft's development platform of the future. Eventually, RELMA will be completely re-written in .NET. To make use of this technology, RELMA now requires that the Microsoft .NET framework be installed prior to installing or upgrading RELMA. This should be done automatically, if you run the Setup.exe program supplied with RELMA. NOTE -- the Install.msi package does NOT contain the .NET framework. If you are installing the program via the .msi package, please make sure that the framework is already installed on the system.
3. RELMA no longer uses InstallShield to handle the program installation and upgrades. With this release, RELMA now users the Microsoft Windows Installer. This switch is a major change, so it is strongly recommended that you backup any current RELMA installation prior to upgrading.
4. RELMA now supports the display of "context specific hierarchies." Users can now create their own hierarchies of LOINC codes and share them between users. See the RELMA User's Manual for further details.
5. RELMA now displays a "Long Common Name" for most LOINCs (RELMA.MDB field LOINC.LONG_COMMON_NAME). The "Long Common Name" is an easy-to-read version of the parts of the LOINC formal name.
6. RELMA now stores and displays the test and battery code systems when importing from delimited files.
7. RELMA now allows exporting to a delimited file of the LOINC database version and the battery and test code systems.
8. RELMA's LOINC Intelligent Mapper now lets you set a time limit for processing each local term. This time limit enables making a first pass over a local term file fairly quickly. Also, the default is to have the Intelligent Mapper process only the unmapped terms, although you can tell the Intelligent Mapper to process both mapped and unmapped terms if you wish.
9. "Configure Grid" is the enhanced version of the old mapping screen "Reset Grid" button, which now lets you change the order, column widths, and visibility of all of the flat (LOINC-only) search results, as well as letting you reset the column order, widths, and visibility to their default settings.
10. The mapping screen "Lookup Term by #" now lets you separate LOINCs and LOINC Parts by any combination of spaces and commas.
11. "Custom Export" now lets you select whether to include the header row.