Number: 2001-058-1-700
Title: Concepts and structure for requests in clinical laboratories
Task Group
Chairman: Urban Forsum
Members: Pedro
Soares de Araujo, Ren�
Dybkaer, Antonin Jabor,
Wolf R. K�lpmann,
and Gunnar Nordin
Completion Date: 2007 - project completed
Objective:
Defining concepts and outlining structures for requests in Laboratory
Medicine taking into consideration the former C-NPU commission's nomenclature
and syntactic rules. The C-NPU commission, maintained as a joint IFCC-IUPAC
activity for two decades, has as its main task to promote and maintain
scientifically and conceptually sound ways of expressing the outcome
of measurements and other examinations in laboratory medicine. The
NPU coding scheme and vocabulary, based on the SI system, concepts
theory and high-level international standards, is the main outcome
and should be the cornerstone for expressing measurements within international
communication standards.
> See former
Series on Properties and Units in
the Clinical Laboratory Sciences
Description:
The background, previous recommendations, and technical reports
are accessible from the link above.
In laboratory medicine measurements and other examinations are made
in the context of requests from physicians and reports back to the
physicians. The request for measurements and examinations is typically
embedded in a request to the laboratory phrased in the medical language
of the requester and using conceptual dimensions and granularity levels
appropriate to a particular patient's case and the discipline of the
requester. Requests usually are formatted within the framework of
an electronic health care record system (or as a paper request), are
transmitted using an electronic health care information system carried
via a communication standard protocol (i.e. HL-7 or Med-RPT) to the
laboratory and, at the laboratory, are subjected to further scrutiny
for conceptual dimensions and granularity levels. In the project,
a solution for the problem of dealing with the request concept in
at least three contexts - health care information system, communication
standard, and clinical laboratory - will be sought. The strong context
dependency of the part of the request containing the medical information
and questions asked is in contrast to the part dealing only with measurements
or other examinations, but the two are clearly related.
The framework for the logics of how to express and formulate metrologically
sound rules that links the examinations required to the medical part
of a request is the main outcome of this project. The project conforms
to the IUPAC strategic goals 2 and 4 i.e. to promote standardized
nomenclature, symbols, terminology and methodology in the chemical
sciences as well as to facilitate the development of effective channels
of communication in international chemistry community.
Progress:
Project completed
U. Forsum and D. Karlsson, Terminology, categories and representation
of examinations in laboratory medicine. Clin. Chem. Lab. Med.
2005;43.344-345 (doi:10.1515/CCLM.2005.060)
Last Update: 13 February 2007
<project announcement published
in Chem.
Int.
24(6) 2002>