Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC)

LOINC was initiated in 1994 by the Regenstrief Institute and developed by Regenstrief and the LOINC Committee as a response to the demand for electronic movement of clinical data from laboratories that produce the data to hospitals, physician's offices, and payers who use the data for clinical care and management purposes. Regenstrief continues to serve as the overall steward of LOINC, developing the standard and cultivating the community of adopters worldwide.

The purpose of the LOINC® database is to facilitate the exchange and pooling of results for clinical care, outcomes management, and research. Currently, most laboratories and clinical services use HL7 to send their results electronically from their reporting systems to their care systems. However, the tests in these messages are identified by means of their internal, idiosyncratic code values. Thus, the care system cannot fully "understand" and properly file the results they receive unless they either adopt the producer's laboratory codes (which is impossible if they receive results from multiple sources), or invest in the work to map each result producer's code system to their internal code system. LOINC codes are universal identifiers for laboratory and other clinical observations that solve this problem. The scope of the LOINC effort includes laboratory and other clinical observations.

Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM)

The Unified Code for Units of Measure is a code system intended to include all units of measures being contemporaneously used in international science, engineering, and business. The purpose is to facilitate unambiguous electronic communication of quantities together with their units. The focus is on electronic communication, as opposed to communication between humans. A typical application of UCUM is electronic data interchange (EDI) protocols, but there is nothing that prevents it from being used in other types of machine communication.  Regenstrief Biomedical Informatics investigators have been active in the interface between LOINC, UCUM, and international discussions for enhancing data exchange and interoperability.

Health Level Seven (HL7) International

Regenstrief/Indiana University biomedical informatics investigators have been leaders in the development of clinical data standards. In 1984, a Regenstrief investigator led an effort that culminated in 1988 with the first clinical message standard.   That work was carried into Health Level Seven (HL7). HL7 is the primary clinical messages standard adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services for use in U.S. health care and public health operations and it is used worldwide.  Virtually all clinical system vendors support HL7, and most North American, European, and Pacific Rim health care institutions use the HL7 standard to exchange clinical results.  Since its inception in 1987, Regenstrief investigators have participated in HL7 development including the Order Entry and Observation Reporting chapters, the HL7 Version 3 Reference Information Model (RIM), and the Version 3 Data Types. In 2011, Regenstrief and HL7 signed a statement of understanding to enhance their long-standing relationship to develop complementary health data standards.