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. 2010 Nov 13:2010:1-5.

Standardizing newborn screening results for health information exchange

Swapna Abhyankar  1 , Michele A Lloyd-Puryear, Rebecca Goodwin, Sara Copeland, John Eichwald, Bradford L Therrell, Alan Zuckerman, Greg Downing, Clement J McDonald
Affiliations

Standardizing newborn screening results for health information exchange

Swapna Abhyankar et al. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. .

Abstract

Newborn screening (NBS) is a complex process that has high-stakes health implications and requires rapid and effective communication between many people and organizations. Currently, each NBS laboratory has its own method of reporting results to state programs, hospitals and individual providers, with wide variation in content and format. Pediatric care providers receive reports by mail, email, fax or telephone, depending on whether the results are normal or abnormal. This process is slow and prone to errors, which can lead to delays in treatment. Multiple agencies worked together to create national guidance for reporting newborn screening results with HL7 messages that contain a prescribed set of LOINC and SNOMED CT codes, report quantitative test results, and use standardized units of measure. Several states are already implementing this guidance. If the guidance is used nationally, office EHRs could capture NBS results more efficiently, and regional and national registries could better analyze aggregate results to facilitate improvements in NBS and further research for these rare conditions.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Excerpt of the LOINC hierarchy showing codes and attributes (required/optional, cardinality and data type) for four of the eight variables in the Newborn Screening Report summary panel.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Excerpt from the answer list for “Sample quality of Dried blood spot,” with sequence numbers and LOINC answer codes.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Excerpt from a prototype Pennsylvania HL7 message, being developed by PerkinElmer and Oz Systems.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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References

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