MeridianMERIDIAN

LOINC Code

identity.medical.loinc

Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes — universal standard for identifying lab observations and clinical measurements. Format: 1-5 digits, hyphen, single check digit.

Casts to
VARCHAR

Shape

Pattern
^\d{1,5}-\d$
ValueLengthShape
2951-26matches
718-75matches
4548-46matches
14749-67matches
2345-76matches
2951-5rejected: one character short

Background

Origin

LOINC stands for Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes.[1] Dr. Clement McDonald created LOINC at the Regenstrief Institute in 1994.[2] The Regenstrief Institute is a US nonprofit medical research organisation.[1] LOINC was created in response to the demand for an electronic clinical care and management database.[1] LOINC continues to be managed by the Regenstrief Institute.[2] The US National Library of Medicine supports the ongoing development of LOINC through a contract arrangement.[3]

Each LOINC entry is assigned a unique code when it is registered.[1] The LOINC code is a numeric code with a Mod 10 check digit.[4]

Use

LOINC is one of the standards used in U.S. Federal Government systems for the electronic exchange of clinical health information.[1] In 1999 the HL7 Standards Development Organization identified LOINC as a preferred code set for laboratory test names.[1] In HL7 FHIR, the URI http://loinc.org identifies LOINC codes.[5] For comparison purposes, FHIR treats LOINC codes as not case sensitive.[5]

The LOINC Users' Guide lists 14 terms known to have invalid check digits.[4] Treat a failed check digit as a reason to look the code up rather than as proof the value is wrong. (Meridian's view) LOINC Answer String IDs, such as LA11165-0, are also valid LOINC codes in FHIR.[5] LOINC Part codes carry an LP prefix and a mod-10 check digit, as in LP31755-9.[5] A column of LOINC codes from a FHIR feed may therefore mix plain numeric codes with LA or LP identifiers, so check for letter prefixes before applying a digits-only pattern. (Meridian's view)

Where you'll meet it

A Regenstrief Institute article says LOINC is used in 193 countries and is available in 20 languages.[2] In Synthea's synthetic patient data, the Code column of observations.csv holds the observation or lab code from LOINC.[6]

Sources

  1. [1]LOINC - Wikipediasecondary source
  2. [2]Clement McDonald, M.D., honored for his pioneering work in medical informatics at Regenstrief Institute to improve health in Indiana and around the world - Regenstrief Instituteorganisation
  3. [3]UMLS - LOINCorganisation
  4. [4]Users' Guide: 12 C - Calculating Mod 10 Check Digits v2023secondary source
  5. [5]Loinc - FHIR v4.0.1documentation
  6. [6]CSV File Data Dictionarydataset

Detection notes

LOINC codes maintained by the Regenstrief Institute. The check digit after the hyphen is a Mod 10 Type 1 check digit.

Use it

CLI · DuckDB
$ finetype infer -i "2951-2" --mode column
→ identity.medical.loinc

SELECT ft_infer('2951-2');
-- → 'identity.medical.loinc'
Cast expression
CAST({col} AS VARCHAR)

Schema

https://meridian.online/schemas/identity.medical.loinc · Frictionless type string

finetype taxonomy identity.medical.loinc -o json-schema

Aliases

lab_codeobservation_code

Type Registry