The logic of the LOINC domain distribution seems to be messy, but it can’t be built automatically in other ways.
So, inclusion (and exclusion) criteria for LOINC concepts required Observation domain:
- values of a ‘classtype’ field are ‘1’ and ‘2’. They indicate all old LOINC Measurements
Then, in a case of non-compliance, we move from one to another:
- values of a ‘survey_quest_text’ field contain question mark (survey_quest_text ~ ‘?’), which always defines LOINC questions regardless of other LOINC properties
- ‘scale_typ’ field has ‘Set’ value indicating concepts used for Clinical Attachments only.
- values of a ‘property’ field are represented by the following:
- ‘ID’ - Identifier - serial numbers, codes, IDs etc.
- ‘Pn’ - Person Name - administrative information about person
- ‘Tele’ - Telephone Number
- ‘EmailAddr’ - Email Address
- ‘Addr’ - Address
- ‘Xad’ - also Address
- ‘Loc’ - Location
- ‘ClockTime’, ‘Date’, ‘TmStp’, ‘TmStpRange’, ‘DateRange’ - time/date/date and time/ranges of different clinical and administrative events
- ‘Hx’ - History of different clinical and administrative events
- ‘Desc’ - Description of procedures or clinical events
- ‘Anat’ - Anatomical sites, points, body structure descriptions
- ‘Instrct’ - Instructions
- ‘Txt’ - Text - notes and comments
- ‘URI’ - Uniform Resource Identifier
- ‘Bib’ - Bibliographic Citation
- values of a ‘system’ field are represented by the following:
- ‘^Family member’,’^Neighborhood’, ‘^Community’, ‘^Brother’,’^Daughter’, ^Sister’, ‘^Son’ - observational particular person-related data
(But ‘^Father’ and ‘^Mother’ systems contain Measurements)
- ‘^CCD’ - Continuity of Care Document
- '^Census tract’ - information about people in a geographic region defined for the purpose of taking a census
- ‘^Clinical trial protocol’ - Clinical trial protocol documentation and reports
- ‘*’ - Mixed category defining sites, types, locations, device peculiarities etc.
- ‘?’ - 1 concept - ‘ED discharge disposition’
- ‘^Contact’, ‘^Emergency contact’ - contact information
- ‘^Donor’ - donor type and ID
- ‘^Event’ - information about incidents or events
- ‘^Facility’ - information about services
-
a value of a ‘method_typ’ field is ‘PhenX’ (the PhenX Toolkit has a lot of questionnaires) and a value of a ‘class’ field is ‘PANEL.PHENX’ (just ‘PHENX’ class is covered by previous conditions) and a value of ‘definitiondescription’ field contains words ‘interviewer’ or ‘question’ (this weeds out Measurements)
-
values of a ‘system’ filed are ‘^Patient’ and ‘*^Patient’ (they contain a lot of observational data directly linked with a patient) and, simultaneously, values of:
A) a ‘scale_typ’ field are:
- ‘Doc’ - various types of documentation
- ‘Nar’ - narrative text
- ‘Nom’ - nominal or categorical responses that do not have a natural ordering
- ‘Ord’ - ordered categorical responses, e.g. ‘Yes’, ‘No’.
- ‘OrdQn’ - quantitative/ordinal - result can be reported as either ordinal or quantitative
while a ‘method_typ’ field value is not ‘Apgar’ (Apgar score is a screening test used to measure the vital signs of a newborn)
OR
B) values of a ‘property’ field are represented by the following:
- ‘Imp’ - impression/interpretation of a study - is used to represent a property when the evaluation is a mental abstraction based on one a collection of measurements and/or data.
- ‘Find’ - findings (seem to be Observations in all cases regardless to the ‘system’, but not)
- ‘NRat’ - number = count/time - e.g. ‘How many cigars are you smoking per week now?’
- ‘Num’ - number - e.g. ‘[#] Pregnancies’
- ‘PrThr’ - presence of symptoms, historical facts, statuses etc.
- ‘RelRto’ - relative ratio - e.g. relative risk of developing disease
- ‘Time’ - time aspects - age, hours, years etc.
- ‘Type’ - a mixed category with a general notion of something
- ‘Arb’ - arbitrary - a mixed category, e.g. ‘Informed consent obtained’ or ‘RhoGam candidate’
while values of a ‘class’ field are not ‘COAG’ (it includes laboratory tests related to hemostasis) and ‘PULM’ (it is about measurements of respiratory function)
NB! All of such properties can be measurements in systems other than ‘^Patient’,’^Patient’, ^Family member’,’^Neighborhood’,’^Brother’,’^Daughter’,’^Sister’,’^Son’,’^CCD’,’^Census tract’, ‘^Clinical trial protocol’, ‘^Community’, ‘*’, ‘?’,’ ^Contact’,’ ^Donor’, ‘^Emergency contact’, ‘^Event’, ‘^Facility’.
- At the end, all results are filtered by a general exclusion criterion:
values of ’ long_common_name’ field do not contain words such as ‘scale’, ‘score’ except those indicating ‘interpretation’ of the results.
