Comments on the 2017 Interoperability Standards Advisory
On November 20, Regenstrief provided its public comments on the current (2017) edition of the Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) published by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). In the last year, the ONC has iteratively edited the ISA...
IVD Vendors are Key for Lab Data Interoperability
Health data is best standardized right at its source. When the head waters are pristine, everyone downstream benefits. Think about clinical laboratory results, which contribute to so many health decisions. It’s time consuming, complex, and resource intensive to have...
Converting and validating units of measure
Making health data interoperable across different IT systems requires a few kinds of standards. Exchange standards like HL7's Version 2, CDA, and FHIR are key to organizing information into a commonly understood structure as it moves between systems. Vocabulary...
Grouping data coded with LOINC
Grouping data coded with similar LOINC codes isn't as easy as it first seems. Perhaps you are processing data from many sources for a research project in a network like PCORnet or ODHSI. Or, maybe you're retrieving data to fulfill a quality measure report. There are...
Tracking Edits to LOINC terms
Each new LOINC® release that Regenstrief publishes contains many edits to LOINC terms. About 7,000 terms were edited in version 2.61 and about 11,000 in version 2.58. That's a lot of change every six months! How is it that all those edits don't cause havoc to users...
Vocabulary Standards Recommendations to NCVHS
On June 21, 2017 I had the privilege of testifying to the U.S. National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics about the role of vocabulary standards like LOINC in accelerating innovation, efficiency, and quality in healthcare. Together with colleagues from the...
LOINC Overview and Background
The universal standard for identifying health measurements, observations, and documents An Overview and Background Background and Motivations At the Regenstrief Institute, Inc., we imagine a world where health is optimized for all through a seamless network of...
Build a School Night
You're Invited! We're so excited to be joining Building Tomorrow for the 10th annual Build-a-School Night. Please join Project Secret Weapon for a spectacular evening to help provide access to high quality education for children in rural Uganda. The night features an...
Importing a Scrivener Template for Scientific Papers
It's no secret that I have fallen in love with using Scrivener for writing scientific papers. Scrivener is a magnificent writing environment for academic papers once you get past the small initial learning curve. In my prior post, I described how I use a custom...
Recruiting partners on the Build-a-School journey
We try to make family meals more than just a pit stop to refuel. The dinner table is a great place for family conversation, although with three young boys sometimes that works better than others, for sure! A couple of nights ago we were discussing fundraising ideas...