From the Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Drs Stram, Hartman, and Pantanowitz); the Information Services Division, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Mr Gigliotti); Laboratory Informaticist & Laboratory LOINC Committee member, Buffalo Grove, Illinois (Dr Pitkus); the Healthcare Transformation Lab, Department of Pathology, University of Utah, Murray (Dr Huff); the Department of Pathology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas (Dr Riben); the Center for Pathology Informatics, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio (Dr Henricks); and 3Scan, San Francisco, California (Dr Farahani).
Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2020 Feb;144(2):229-239. doi: 10.5858/arpa.2018-0477-RA. Epub 2019 Jun 20.
CONTEXT.—: The Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) system is supposed to facilitate interoperability, and it is the federally required code for exchanging laboratory data.
OBJECTIVE.—: To provide an overview of LOINC, emerging issues related to its use, and areas relevant to the pathology laboratory, including the subtleties of test code selection and importance of mapping the correct codes to local test menus.
DATA SOURCES.—: This review is based on peer-reviewed literature, federal regulations, working group reports, the LOINC database (version 2.65), experience using LOINC in the laboratory at several large health care systems, and insight from laboratory information system vendors.
CONCLUSIONS.—: The current LOINC database contains more than 55 000 numeric codes specific for laboratory tests. Each record in the LOINC database includes 6 major axes/parts for the unique specification of each individual observation or measurement. Assigning LOINC codes to a laboratory's test menu should be a defined process. In some cases, LOINC can aid in distinguishing laboratory data among different information systems, whereby such benefits are not achievable by relying on the laboratory test name alone. Criticisms of LOINC include the complexity and resource-intensive process of selecting the most correct code for each laboratory test, the real-world experience that these codes are not uniformly assigned across laboratories, and that 2 tests that may have the same appropriately assigned LOINC code may not necessarily have equivalency to permit interoperability of their result data. The coding system's limitations, which subsequently reduce the potential utility of LOINC, are poorly understood outside of the laboratory.
逻辑观察标识符名称和代码（LOINC）系统旨在促进互操作性，并且是用于交换实验室数据的联邦要求代码。
提供 LOINC 的概述，与其使用相关的新出现的问题，以及与病理实验室相关的领域，包括测试代码选择的细微差别以及将正确的代码映射到本地测试菜单的重要性。
本综述基于同行评议文献、联邦法规、工作组报告、LOINC 数据库（版本 2.65）、在几个大型医疗保健系统的实验室中使用 LOINC 的经验，以及来自实验室信息系统供应商的见解。
当前的 LOINC 数据库包含超过 55000 个特定于实验室测试的数字代码。LOINC 数据库中的每条记录都包含 6 个主要轴/部分，用于对每个单独的观察或测量进行唯一指定。为实验室的测试菜单分配 LOINC 代码应该是一个定义明确的过程。在某些情况下，LOINC 可以帮助区分不同信息系统中的实验室数据，仅凭实验室测试名称无法实现这些益处。对 LOINC 的批评包括为每个实验室测试选择最正确代码的复杂性和资源密集型过程、这些代码在实验室之间未统一分配的实际经验，以及可能具有相同适当分配的 LOINC 代码的 2 个测试不一定具有等效性以允许其结果数据的互操作性。编码系统的局限性，随后降低了 LOINC 的潜在效用，在实验室之外知之甚少。
