[Standardization of terminology in laboratory medicine I].
BACKGROUND
Standardization of medical terminology is essential for data transmission between health-care institutions or clinical laboratories and for maximizing the benefits of information technology. Purpose of our study was to standardize the medical terms used in the clinical laboratory, such as test names, units, terms used in result descriptions, etc. During the first year of the study, we developed a standard database of concept names for laboratory terms, which covered the terms used in government health care centers, their branch offices, and primary health care units.


METHODS
Laboratory terms were collected from the electronic data interchange (EDI) codes from National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC), Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC) database, community health centers and their branch offices, and clinical laboratories of representative university medical centers. For standard expression, we referred to the English-Korean/ Korean-English medical dictionary of Korean Medical Association and the rules for foreign language translation. Programs for mapping between LOINC DB and EDI code and for translating English to Korean were developed.


RESULTS
A Korean standard laboratory terminology database containing six axial concept names such as components, property, time aspect, system (specimen), scale type, and method type was established for 7,508 test observations. Short names and a mapping table for EDI codes and Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) were added. Synonym tables for concept names, words used in the database, and six axial terms were prepared to make it easier to find the standard terminology with common terms used in the field of laboratory medicine.


CONCLUSIONS
Here we report for the first time a Korean standard laboratory terminology database for test names, result description terms, result units covering most laboratory tests in primary healthcare centers.
Yoon
Soo Young
SY
Department of Laboratory Medicine, School of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.
Yoon
Jong Hyun
JH
Min
Won Ki
WK
Lim
Hwan Sub
HS
Song
Junghan
J
Chae
Seok Lae
SL
Lee
Chang Kyu
CK
Kwon
Jung Ah
JA
Lee
Kap No
KN
D019411:Clinical Laboratory Techniques / Q000145:classification* / Q000592:standards; D016208:Databases, Factual; D007723:Korea; D007802:Language; D039703:Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D017432:Unified Medical Language System