In this Update
Oh my, this is one fantastic release. We have a massive amount of new content, first ever publications of the LOINC/RSNA Radiology Playbook and the LOINC/IEEE Medical Device Code Mapping Table, and a few updates to search fields in RELMA.
Read on for the full details.
Highlights from our best LOINC release yet
New content
LOINC version 2.54 contains 78959 terms, an increase of 2693 since the June 2015 version. Approximately 4860 terms have been edited. A total of 2406 terms have been deprecated.
This release includes 998 laboratory, 1457 clinical, and 238 new survey terms.
Some of the new content highlights in this version:
- Over 300 drug/toxicology terms
- Over 430 chemistry terms
- 71 microbiology terms including a new term for Zika virus RNA (79190-5)
- More than 80 molecular pathology terms, plus 12 pharmacogenomics terms created for the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC)
- New panels for laboratory terms, including:
- Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I) newborn screening panel (79563-3)
- Purine & Pyrimidine panels for urine (79673-0), ser/plas (79665-6) and CSF (79668-0)
- Amino acid panels for urine, ser/plas and CSF
- Peritoneal equilibration test panel (78747-3)
- Prolactin isoforms panel (78993-3)
- Enteric pathogens panel – Stool (79381-0)
- Parent drug and trough panels for anti-epileptic drugs and others
- Cold agglutinin panel (79160-8)
- Serial sputum smears for diagnosing pulmonary tuberculosis panel (79424-8)
- Respiratory bacteria and viruses DNA and RNA panel (78922-2)
- HEDIS 2016 Value sets
- Panel for the 2015 Edition Health IT Certification Criteria set of terms related to Social, psychological and behavioral observations (80216-5)
- Over 340 document-related codes
- 189 new terms for NIH/NEI’s National Ophthalmic Disease Genotyping and Phenotyping Network (eyeGENE) (can be found by searching for “NEI“)
- 190 new terms for DICOM Supplement 169 (“Simplified Adult Echocardiography Report”), which is based on American Society of Echocardiography guidelines for adult echocardiography, plus more than 80 terms for the Japanese Circulation Society, primarily for angiography, echo, and other concepts related to reporting cardiac procedure results using HL7 CDA (class = CARD.US.DICOM)
- 310 terms for IEEE Rosetta 11073 10101, including concepts related to EKG, invasive blood pressure monitoring, anesthesia gas delivery and respiratory monitoring, and infant microenvironment. All of the concepts available as IEEE 11073 Rosetta panel (75885-4), new concepts will be added to panel as they are created
- 65 new terms for Radiology, including CT terms to complete RadLex CT mappings
- Terms to represent concepts in the Boston University Activity Measure for Post-Acute Care (AM-PAC)
- Terms to represent concepts in the Care Connections Neuromuscular and Orthopedic functional indices
- Score change terms for HOOS, KOOS and Veteran’s Rand (VR) instruments
- Terms for the General Practitioner Assessment of Cognition (GPCOG) (79115-2)
- Over 190 terms created for PROMIS short forms and item banks
- Terms for Vanderbilt ADHD Diagnostic Rating Scale
- 54 new terms for nutrition assessment
Other edits contained in this release:
- Added ‘3000’ rank to the COMMON_TEST_RANK field for 240 existing terms in anticipation of a new release (version 1.4) of the Top 2000 file in early 2016
- LOINC 6556-5 Streptococcus pyogenes Ag [Presence] in Throat by Immunoassay, is now deprecated and mapped to 78012-2 Streptococcus pyogenes Ag [Presence] in Throat by Rapid immunoassay. LOINC 6556-5 is in the Top 2000 file and will be replaced by 78012-2 in version 1.4.
- Updated the Component for 12 HLA allele and 219 HLA antigen terms per current HLA nomenclature guidelines
- Ongoing work with RSNA to establish a unified model for naming radiology terms, including several more changes related to the CT domain plus Long Common Name and Short name updates for 428 concepts for better readability
- Changed the Time value for over 2100 terms that specify a look-back period in the Component from ‘Pt’ to the specific time stated by the question. For example, timing changed from ‘Pt’ to ‘7D’ for terms that specify a look-back period of 7 days
- Added ‘Dwell’ to Peritoneal dialysis test terms to clarify that the testing is performed during the dialysis procedure
- Updated several newborn screening (NBS) answer lists, including those related to NICU factors that affect NBS interpretation, infant feeding types, conditions screened for, and interpretation
- Finalized American Physical Therapy Association’s Outcomes Registry panel, changed terms from Trial to Active to coincide with the Registry go-live in January 2016
- Ongoing changes for Arb/Ord or ACnc/Ord terms to Pr/Ord or Threshold/Ord
- Method of {Author Type} was changed to {Role}, a more inclusive name for any author of a clinical document, not just clinical care providers
Notice of of changes to the public LOINC data files in this release
LOINC Users’ Guide Updates
Each release we make a number of updates to the LOINC User’s Guide. This time around is no exception, but in particular, we want to draw your attention to one change in particular. The RadLex-LOINC Radiology Playbook User Guide is published as an Annex in the LOINC Users Guide. The Playbook User Guide is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Regenstrief Institute and the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). The organizations have developed a model that combines and unifies the useful aspects of LOINC Radiology and the RSNA RadLex Playbook.
This new radiology model was the basis for many edits to computed tomography terms in this release (and the one prior). It is, like all good standards, a work in progress. It will be the basis for content modeling updates for terms using other imaging modalities going forward as well. The Playbook User Guide will be helpful in explaining and understanding the attributes represented in the new LOINC/RSNA Radiology Playbook file described below.
LOINC Linguistic Updates
The global community of LOINC users continues to help produce a wonderful collection of translations. For many years we have made these linguistic variants (we support multiple translations of the same language) available in RELMA and in our online search.loinc.org application. You can also download the translations in the LOINC Linguistic Variants File.
Updated Linguistic Variants in this release:
- Chinese (China)
- Dutch (Netherlands)
- French (Canada)
- French (France)
- Italian (Italy)
- German (Austria)
New LOINC/RSNA Radiology Playbook now available
Regenstrief Institute and the RSNA are pleased to announce the availability of the first release of the LOINC/RSNA Radiology Playbook. This file is the product of a collaboration between the RSNA and Regenstrief Institute, Inc to develop a unified model for naming radiology procedures. The main file contains linkages between LOINC radiology terms, the attribute values of the Unified Model as both LOINC Parts and RadLex terms, and any applicable mappings to RadLex Playbook terms. The current version contains computed tomography terms. As the content work in other modalities is completed, it will be added to the LOINC/RSNA Radiology Playbook file published here.
New LOINC/IEEE Medical Device Code Mapping Table now available
Regenstrief Institute and the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) are pleased to announce the availability of the LOINC/IEEE Medical Device Code Mapping Table. This file contains linkages between LOINC terms and content from IEEE EMB/11073 standard for communication between medical, health care and wellness devices and with external computer systems.. From the current version of LOINC, it includes the LOINC code, Long Common Name, and any applicable attribution statement. From IEEE 11073-10101, it includes the Reference ID, Numeric code, Dimensionality, and Description (when available).
New Lucene (search line) tricks
VersionLastChanged and chng_type provides a convenient way to find see the new and updated terms with each release. Examples:
versionlastchanged:2.54 chngtype:addversionlastchanged:2.54 -chngtype:addNew Order Code value set. We have added the expanded Common Lab Order Codes value set from the S&I Framework aLOINC Order Code Initiative. See LOINC codes in this list with a query like:
commonlaborder:trueA few other fields added to the searchable Lucene index (see release notes).