Best Practices for Managing Terminologies in a Health Information Exchange
This post is adapted from my book LOINC Essentials, your step-by-step guide for getting your local codes mapped to LOINC. Health Information Exchange (HIE) enables health care professionals, patients, and caregivers to electronically access medical information when...
Dynamically updating the Divi Circle Counter
It’s no secret that I love designing websites with Divi from Elegant Themes. Divi powers this site, thepocketsquareproject.org, and soon, the main loinc.org site as well. I love Divi’s layout builders and wide array of customizable modules that look amazing together....
Education: the secret weapon to change the world
61 million children worldwide don't have a primary school to go to. It's amazing to think that if all students in low-income countries could acquire basic reading skills, world poverty would be cut by 12%. Education is such a powerful force for all kinds of global...
Regenstrief’s approach to licensing LOINC
A translation of this post is available in Chinese thanks to Lin Zhang, a LOINC volunteer from China. Without a doubt, making LOINC freely available under an open license is a key factor in its adoption around the world. Although we often explain the basics of LOINC's...
Health data is commonly modeled as observations
In my role on the 2017 Interoperability Standards Advisory Task Force of the U.S. Health IT Standards Committee (HITSC), we are making recommendations about revisions and enhancements that the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) could make for the...
Audi A7 Subwoofer Audio Upgrade
After my beloved Lexus LS met an untimely death this summer, I got a new ride. Meet the gorgeous Audi A7 (Prestige Trim). Hello black beauty. The Audi is sweet, but there was one big problem. The bass from the 14-speaker Bose surround sound system is...
Understanding CT 3D post-processing and “by Reconstruction” terms in LOINC
Over the last couple of years, the Regenstrief Institute and the Radiological Society of North America have been working together in an amazingly productive collaboration to unify the LOINC radiology content with the RSNA's RadLex Playbook. The goal is to produce a...
Sources of de-identified laboratory data coded with LOINC
Over time, several research scientists have asked me whether there are any open access databases of de-identified laboratory data coded with LOINC. Clinical laboratory data are used in a majority of medical decisions. They are also valuable in measuring the quality of...
Summer 2016 LOINC Update
With a Committee meeting and new release, June is always a big month in LOINC-land. As we wrap up our second quarter and are enjoying summer, I wanted to share some of the key highlights from the last few months. We’ve got new users, new team members, a new release,...
Which LOINC name should I use for what?
LOINC terms have a primary name called the “fully specified name” (FSN) with an unusual six-part structure. The separate attributes of the name are beautifully designed for distinguishing the key features of measurements and observations. As I describe in LOINC...