LOINC® - A universal catalog of individual clinical observations and uniform representation of enumerated collections

Abstract

In many areas of practice and research, clinical observations are recorded on data collection forms by asking and answering questions, yet without being represented in accepted terminology standards these results cannot be easily shared among clinical care and research systems. LOINC contains a well-developed model for representing variables, answer lists, and the collections that contain them. We have successfully added many assessments and other collections of variables to LOINC in this model. By creating a uniform representation and distributing it worldwide at no cost, LOINC aims to lower the barriers to interoperability among systems and make this valuable data available across settings when and where it is needed.