Regenstrief Links LOINC, SNOMED to Drive Health Data Interoperability

Regenstrief Institute and SNOMED International have announced the LOINC Ontology, a standardized terminology initiative focused on facilitating broader health data interoperability.

The LOINC Ontology aims to support providers and users who implement different combinations of SNOMED CT and LOINC data standards through a single solution. Linked together, SNOMED CT provides the computable framework, and LOINC provides laboratory and pathology content in an understood format to countries that do not currently leverage LOINC.

The standardized terminology initiative provides new opportunities for advancing LOINC and SNOMED adoption and driving interoperability between the two standards.

Regenstrief Institute owns the LOINC Ontology, but each organization retains editorial control of its respective standards.

Providers that use LOINC will have access to the solution without charge under the existing LOINC royalty-free license. SNOMED International members and users will be able to work with LOINC in the same format they use for SNOMED CT.

The organizations will release the LOINC Ontology preview in the last quarter of the 2023 calendar year for review and feedback.

“The LOINC Ontology, a LOINC and SNOMED CT interoperability solution, is novel and transformative in providing clinical observation content in an integrated format and accelerates interoperability and supports stakeholders with meeting clinical, regulatory, and administrative requirements,” Marjorie Rallins, DPM, MS, executive director of LOINC and health data standards at Regenstrief, said in a press release.

LOINC, short for Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes, is a worldwide data standard used in 193 countries and available in 20 languages. The standard identifies health measurements, observations, and documents to support the identification, exchange, and collection of health data. Regenstrief Institute created and maintains the system, which is free to users.

“Significant commitment and collaboration has been invested by both teams to produce the LOINC ontology preview,” said Don Sweete, SNOMED International CEO. “This serves as an excellent illustration of how we have leveraged our mutual expertise to further the goal of interoperability for implementers globally.”

SNOMED International is a not-for-profit organization charged with setting global standards for health terminology. SNOMED CT is a comprehensive, multilingual healthcare terminology created to capture the care of individuals in EHR platforms and facilitate data sharing, clinical decision support, and analytics.

SNOWMED International and Regenstrief signed a collaborative agreement in 2022 which laid the foundation for the LOINC extension of SNOMED CT.