Terminologies

In German laboratories, site-specific value lists and regulations are often applied. This model aims to standardise codes with international systems such as SNOMED CT or LOINC.

• LOINC provides codes that represent the names of information items (e.g. questions) and SNOMED CT provides codes that can represent nominal and ordinal values (e.g. answers) for these named information items.

E.g. Culture Diagnostics: Question (LOINC):

Answer (SNOMED CT):

For some concepts both terminologies offer possible mappings. LOINC test definitions are usually very specific and already contain the names of the organisms.

SNOMED DT concepts are more general as they do not aim to describe laboratory tests in detail.

e.g. virulence factor

For Observation methods we used SNOMED concepts from the procedure hierarchy which seemeed more comprehensive than the qualifier value one. However, due to an agreement between SNOMED and LOINC, this choice might change in the future when the LOINC method axis of laboratory procedures will be included in the qualifier value hierarchy

For the EUCAST values, we obtained new codes from SNOMED CT that specfy the system and the version (EUCAST 2019) to remove ambiguity. For CLSI the HL7 terminology can be used as it explicitly refers to this system.