The latest release of LOINC adds 1,340 new terms and numerous updates. Version 2.70 is now available for free from the LOINC website.
Changes to LOINC release schedule
To better align with users’ needs and our internal timelines, LOINC’s twice-yearly release schedule is shifting to mid-February and mid-August. The first release within this new schedule will be in August 2021 so you can expect another full LOINC release in just two months.
Combined release notes
This release marks the first publication of combined release notes across all LOINC release artifacts. Rather than referring to separate documents, the single LOINC Release Notes page can be found in the LOINC Knowledge Base (KB) as well as a PDF in each LOINC artifact download. Individual Readme notes, which contain the technical structure of each file, will continue to be published with each accessory file.
Content highlights
During this release cycle we continued to prioritize creating LOINC terms and other resources related to SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 testing, clinical care, documentation, and reporting. Filtered subsets of these terms can be found on our dedicated web page. This page will be updated daily with any new pre-release terms or edits.
Three accessory files have been promoted to production status: Change Snapshot, Multi-Axial Hierarchy, and the LOINC Part file.
For continued highlights of new and updated content included in this release, please refer to the LOINC Release Notes page. The LOINC KB also has an archive of past LOINC Release Notes, though be aware this older information is not available through a KB search.
Notice of upcoming changes
For the August 2022 release the following fields will be deleted from the LOINC Table structure:
- EXAMPLE_SI_UCUM_UNITS
- UnitsAndRange
- SUBMITTED_UNITS
- CDISC_COMMON_TESTS
The LOINC Release Notes has explanations regarding these upcoming changes.
SearchLOINC v2
The completely rebuilt SearchLOINC web app moves from Beta to production maturity with this LOINC release. We have made numerous improvements since its initial public Beta release in December 2020—much informed by all the tremendous Beta testers. We appreciate your reports.
Searching is now much faster, especially with large result sets. Filtering is now more user friendly and available with a click, saving horizontal space for results display. You can now export your LOINC, Part, Answer List, and Group search results as a comma-separated values (CSV) file or HL7® FHIR® ValueSet (LOINC terms only).
The new SearchLOINC v2 is available at https://search.loinc.org or https://loinc.org/search. To ease the transition for users, the old SearchLOINC v1—now updated with LOINC Version 2.70—will remain available until the next LOINC release in August 2021.
We plan to add additional features to SearchLOINC v2 in the coming months. We continue to welcome feedback, bug reports, and feature requests. Send your comments regarding SearchLOINC to [email protected].
LOINC FHIR® Terminology Services (TS) API
During our release process we have loaded the latest content to our FHIR terminology server. The service currently supports CodeSystem, ValueSet, ConceptMap, and Questionnaire resources.
We are still working out the kinks with versioning of LOINC content via this interface. Once available, this will allow us to publish previous versions of LOINC as well as pre-release terms simultaneously with the current release. We anticipate an update with the next LOINC release in August 2021.
See current TS documentation at https://loinc.org/fhir.
Linguistic variants updated with this release
We are extremely thankful for the network of volunteers who provide translations of LOINC terms. The following translations have been updated with this release. All linguistic variants are available within SearchLOINC (both v1 and v2) and RELMA, as well as a download of the Linguistic Variants Version 3.3 file.
- es_ES_12 – Spanish (SPAIN)
- fr_CA_8 – French (CANADA)
- fr_FR_18 – French (FRANCE)
- it_IT_16 – Italian (ITALY)
- nl_NL_22 – Dutch (NETHERLANDS)
- zh_CN_5 – Chinese (CHINA)
See the LOINC Release Notes for details on when each of the 16 linguistic variants was last updated.
RELMA Version 7.3
No significant changes have been made in this version of RELMA. As reported previously, we will continue to migrate features of the Windows program to web-based tools. Once all functionality has been replaced, we plan to retire the existing RELMA program.