The Regenstrief Institute has announced its latest semiannual update to the Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC®) system, marking significant advancements in global health terminology. This update, achieved through extensive international collaboration, aims to strengthen the electronic exchange of clinical and laboratory data, thereby supporting the widespread adoption of LOINC standards in healthcare systems around the world.
The latest release from Regenstrief’s Health Data Standards (HDS) unit includes over 3,000 updates, with nearly 1,600 new concepts and modifications to 1,400 existing ones. These updates reflect the institute's ongoing efforts to adapt to emerging healthcare trends and to ensure that health data can be seamlessly exchanged between disparate systems.
The development process involved collaborations with numerous global partners. Specific focus areas of the updates include diagnostics, medical devices, public health reporting, social determinants of health (SDOH), and various health assessments.
Among the most notable updates are the following:
• Diagnostics and Medical Devices: The HDS unit developed nearly 250 new concepts aimed at standardizing the representation of information stored in electronic systems, which is crucial when translating health data across systems with different structures. This includes new concepts for an FDA-approved AI diagnostic system for cervical cancer and updates related to continuous glucose monitoring devices in collaboration with the Diabetes Technology Society.
• Public Health and Chronic Pain Management: LOINC’s updates also address public health needs, such as the creation of new concepts for the High Impact Chronic Pain assessment, developed in collaboration with the National Committee for Quality Assurance. These updates aim to improve chronic pain management and intervention strategies.
• International Collaborations: The release includes new concepts developed with the Department of Health in Australasia to standardize pathology information in laboratory systems, as well as contributions to the national laboratory information system in the Netherlands. Additionally, LOINC now supports the International Patient Summary with content designed to alert clinicians to extreme health conditions.
• Social Determinants of Health (SDOH): Continuing its work with Health Level Seven® International on the Gravity Project, the HDS unit has incorporated new SDOH content, addressing critical social risk factors like job insecurity and housing instability.
• PhenX Toolkit and SNOMED-LOINC Interoperability: New content has been added to the PhenX Toolkit, which aids cross-study analysis in biomedical research. Moreover, the collaboration with SNOMED International has resulted in a preview version of the LOINC Ontology browser, facilitating greater interoperability between LOINC and SNOMED systems.
LOINC, maintained by the Regenstrief Institute, is a globally recognized standard for health terminology. It plays a vital role in enabling the identification, exchange, and collection of health data across various systems. LOINC is freely available to users and is supported by funding from U.S. federal agencies and other organizations. The system is updated biannually, with the next release scheduled for February 2025.
This latest update underscores the importance of collaboration in advancing health data standards and highlights LOINC’s ongoing commitment to enhancing semantic interoperability across the global healthcare landscape.
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