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COVID-19 testnorm: A tool to normalize COVID-19 testing names to LOINC codes

  • Xiao Dong
  • , Jianfu Li
  • , Ekin Soysal
  • , Jiang Bian
  • , Scott L. DuVall
  • , Elizabeth Hanchrow
  • , Hongfang Liu
  • , Kristine E. Lynch
  • , Michael Matheny
  • , Karthik Natarajan
  • , Lucila Ohno-Machado
  • , Serguei Pakhomov
  • , Ruth Madeleine Reeves
  • , Amy M. Sitapati
  • , Swapna Abhyankar
  • , Theresa Cullen
  • , Jami Deckard
  • , Xiaoqian Jiang
  • , Robert Murphy
  • , Hua Xu

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Large observational data networks that leverage routine clinical practice data in electronic health records (EHRs) are critical resources for research on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Data normalization is a key challenge for the secondary use of EHRs for COVID-19 research across institutions. In this study, we addressed the challenge of automating the normalization of COVID-19 diagnostic tests, which are critical data elements, but for which controlled terminology terms were published after clinical implementation. We developed a simple but effective rule-based tool called COVID-19 TestNorm to automatically normalize local COVID-19 testing names to standard LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes) codes. COVID-19 TestNorm was developed and evaluated using 568 test names collected from 8 healthcare systems. Our results show that it could achieve an accuracy of 97.4% on an independent test set. COVID-19 TestNorm is available as an open-source package for developers and as an online Web application for end users (https://clamp.uth.edu/covid/loinc.php). We believe that it will be a useful tool to support secondary use of EHRs for research on COVID-19.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1437-1442
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association
Volume27
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

  1. SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being
    SDG 3 Good Health and Well-being

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • COVID-19 TestNorm
  • LOINC
  • Natural language processing
  • Testing name normalization

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