Two Competing Clinical Code Groups Team Up

From a healthcare informatics perspective, it's as if Juliet married Romeo and the parents approved.

Two not-for-profit standards-development organizations, producers of once-competing clinical codes, SNOMED-CT and LOINC, have reached a 10-year collaborative agreement to work together to “improve safety, functionality and interoperability for the rapidly growing number of clinicians who manage and exchange health data with electronic medical records.”

The agreement, announced by the Regenstrief Institute of Indianapolis and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization of Copenhagen, Denmark, will “link the rich clinical semantic of SNOMED-CT to LOINC codes, which provide extensive coverage of laboratory tests and some types of clinical measures,” according to a news release.

“The organizations believe it makes sense to work together to limit duplication of effort and focus limited resources on enhancements that serve the practical needs of the growing number of users” of both codes, according to the statement.