Objective: Clinical laboratories in the United States do not have an explicit result standard to report the 7 billion laboratory tests results they produce each year. The absence of standardized test results creates inefficiencies and ambiguities for secondary data users. We developed and tested a tool to standardize the results of laboratory tests in a large, multicenter clinical data warehouse. Methods: Laboratory records, each of which consisted of a laboratory result and a test identifier, from 27 diverse facilities were captured from 2000 through 2015. Each record underwent a standardization process to convert the original result into a format amenable to secondary data analysis. The standardization process included the correction of typos, normalization of categorical results, separation of inequalities from numbers, and conversion of numbers represented by words (eg, "million") to numerals. Quality control included expert review. Results: We obtained 1.266 Â 10 9 laboratory records and standardized 1.252 Â 10 9 records (98.9%). Of the unique unstandardized records (78.887 Â 10 3 ), most appeared <5 times (96%, eg, typos), did not have a test identifier (47%), or belonged to an esoteric test with <100 results (2%). Overall, these 3 reasons accounted for nearly all unstandardized results (98%). Conclusion: Current results suggest that the tool is both scalable and generalizable among diverse clinical laboratories. Based on observed trends, the tool will require ongoing maintenance to stay current with new tests and result formats. Future work to develop and implement an explicit standard for test results would reduce the need to retrospectively standardize test results. Key words: LOINC, clinical laboratory information systems, controlled vocabulary Clinical laboratories in the United States do not have an explicit result standard to report the 7 billion laboratory tests results they produce each year. The absence of a result standard creates inefficiencies and ambiguities for secondary data users. We developed and tested a tool to standardize the results of laboratory tests in a large, multicenter clinical data warehouse. BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE
Hauser et al. REF proposed a LOINC-based approach to standardize the results of laboratory tests in multicenter CDW.
LabRS: A Rosetta stone for retrospective standardization of clinical laboratory test results
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
Computer Science Medicine