Current versions of LOINC and RELMA released December 26, 2013.
LOINC version 2.46 has some nice treats in it
New content
LOINC version 2.46 contains 73,115 terms, an increase of 490 since the June 2013 version. Approximately 300 terms have been edited. A total of 2191 terms have been deprecated. This release includes over 300 laboratory, 110 clinical or attachment, and 47 survey-related terms.
Some of the new content highlights in this version:
- Approximately 75 drug/toxicology tests, including confirmation tests for specific Polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) congeners and the NBOMe series of hallucinogenic chemicals as well as analysis on unknown substances (e.g. unknown powders, liquids, capsules, tablets, syringe contents, etc.).
- Over sixty hematology/blood count related tests on various specimens, including cord blood (post-delivery), fetal blood (in utero), and bone marrow.
- Over 40 chemistry tests, including observation for newborn screening.
- Approximately 80 new codes in microbiology and serology, including codes for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus and Major histocompatibility complex class I chain-related antigen A (MICA) antigens. A few codes are veterinary-specific, including tests for Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) and prion protein analysis.
- New laboratory panels, including the new 2014 HEDIS Value Sets, CBC with Differential panel for Cord blood , MICA (Major histocompatibility complex class I chain-related antigen A ) IgG antibodies, MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) coronavirus RNA panel, and a Mycobacterium tuberculosis stimulated gamma interferon & spot count panel.
- Several new terms for action plans (submitted by SE Minnesota Beacon program), including anaphylaxis, autism, ADHD, cystic fibrosis, inflammatory bowel disease, muscular dystrophy, and diabetes type I and II action plans.
- Codes representing interRAI© clinical assessments for home health care, palliative care, acute care, long term care facility, emergency screener for psychiatry, contact and community health assessments.
- Codes for several forms or survey instruments, including:
- Codes created for (but not limited in use to) several HL7 Implementation Guides and registry reports, including:
- HL7 IG for CDAR2: Clinical Oncology Patient Transfer Summary, Release 1: see LOINC 74156-1, Oncology treatment plan and summary Document
- HL7 Implementation Guide for CDA Release 2.0: Form Definition and Questionnaire response documents, Release 1: see LOINCs 74468-0, 74465-6, 74467-2 and 74466-4.
- HL7 Version 3 Implementation Guide: Virtual Medical Record for Clinical Decision Support (vMR-CDS), Release 1: see LOINC 74028-2, Virtual Medical Record for Clinical Decision Support panel HL7-VMR-CDS
- HL7 CDA HIV/AIDS Services Report Implementation Guide: see LOINC 74264-3, HIV summary registry report
- American College of Surgeons, National Trauma Databank (NTDB): see LOINC 74198-3, Trauma summary registry report
LOINC 2.46 also includes major updates to the LOINC Document Ontology:
- With the guidance of the Clinical LOINC Committee, we extensively reviewed existing clinical document type codes and compared them to the set of Document Ontology axis values that the Committee had approved for new terms. This review has been in process for several years, but we have now completed it for all terms in the DOC.CLINRPT (now called DOC.ONTOLOGY as of version 2.50) class. As a result of this review, several clinical document terms were either revised or deprecated.
- Based on decisions from this review, we have updated the LOINC Document Ontology hierarchies and axis values in the LOINC database, on the LOINC website, and in the Users Guide. The LOINC Users Guide serves as the official version of the LOINC Document Ontology (see Section 7).
- Beginning with this release (v2.46), we provide the part numbers for clinical document axis values in the LOINC Users Guide. In addition, the Clinical document parts, part number, and part type (e.g. Subject matter domain, Type of service, etc.) can be viewed in RELMA under the parts search tab (see page 53 of the RELMA manual). The linkage between LOINC codes in the DOC.CLINRPT (now called DOC.ONTOLOGY as of version 2.50) class and the set of document ontology axis values they contain are provided in the LOINC Document Ontology File that is a separate download in the LOINC distribution.
- New terms are available to report a LOINC Document Ontology axis value (Kind of document, Type of service, Setting, Subject matter domain, and Role).
- This work was performed in synchrony with work in HL7 to develop the HL7 Implementation Guide: LOINC Clinical Document Ontology, which can serve as a helpful resource for LOINC Document Ontology Users.
Other edits in this release:
Where present, we removed tab and line feed characters within the Long Common Name field (primarily PhenX terms). We also continue the clean-up effort started in version 2.44 for replacing extended ASCII and UNICODE characters above code point 127 with more common ASCII characters, where appropriate. We expect this effort to take several more cycles to complete.
Notice of upcoming file name changes
In our ongoing effort to provide consistency and uniformity in the LOINC release artifacts, we are updating our file naming conventions. Beginning with the June 2014 release most, if not all, not all file names will use the following naming convention: LOINC_<version#>_<ArtifactLabel>.<Extension>.
For example, we expect to rename the file LOINC_242_NEWBORN_SCREENING_PANELS.zip that was included in the 2.42 release to LOINC_246_NewbornScreeningPanels.zip in the June 2014 release.
Notice of discontinuation of tab-delimited file format:
As we announced previously, this release discontinues publication of the tab-delimited format of the LOINC Table (may it rest in peace). The CSV format is now the sole text format distribution.
RELMA version 6.4 gets tags!
Customize your mapping workflow with tags
The biggest new feature we added in this release is tagging for your local terms. You can now create and assign custom tags like “needs review” or “to submit” that can then be used as a filter when navigating through local terms in your working set (on the mapping screen). Creating and assigning tags works similarly to how you’ve seen them in Flickr, Evernote, or Mac OS X Mavericks. Use them to help create a mapping workflow that suits you. Enjoy!
Other cool stuff we packed into this release
- You can now import Local Codes via Microsoft Excel file (.xls|.xlsx).
- We have revised and clarified some of the fields on the “Propose a LOINC” form
- You can now search for the LOINC Document Ontology axis values on the Part Search screen
- Squashed a few bugs and made a few optimizations (see the RELMA Release Notes for the full details)
Tap the wisdom of the crowd when mapping your terms to LOINC
Once you’ve joined the study on the website and logged into RELMA, the search grid will show two new columns with these details. It’s all pretty awesome, really.
Also, please consider contributing your local code to LOINC mappings back to the shared repository, either using RELMA itself or just sending them to us in a spreadsheet.
Language Translations
- Brand new for this release: Dutch (Netherlands)
- A major update to the Portuguese (Brazil) translation
- Also updated in this release: Chinese (China), French (Canada), French (France), Italian (Italy), Russian (Russian Federation), Spanish (Spain)