Regenstrief Develops Tracking Codes for Wuhan Coronavirus

Source: Inside Indiana Business

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indianapolis-based Regenstrief Institute is doing its
part to help public health leaders track cases of Wuhan coronavirus
(2019-nCoV) during the global public health emergency.

Researchers are creating a series of codes to identify the lab tests used to
screen patients for the virus.

The institute says since the new strain of coronavirus had never been
identified before, the coding will make it easier to track cases of the
virus in the U.S. and across the globe.

“With novel viruses that appear to be easily transmittable, such as the
coronavirus, it is vitally important that all identified cases be reported
quickly for public health tracking,” said Dr. Theresa Cullen, associate
director of the Global Health Informatics program at Regenstrief Institute.
“These codes will facilitate the identification of cases, not just from
system to system, but from health department to health department and even
country to country,”

Cullen says the codes are part of a universal coding system called Logical
Observation Identifiers Names and Codes. LOINC identifies health
measurements, observations and documents.

LOINC, which was created by Regenstrief, uses standard terms, allowing data
to be collected and shared electronically between public health agencies,
such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Swapna
Abhyankar is associate director of content development for LOINC.

“We create codes for everything, regardless of whether it’s new (virus) or
not. If you go to the doctor and you have a cholesterol level done, then the
results are associated with a particular code. So that the next doctor you
go see in a different hospital system or different state or different
country will know exactly what that result means,” explained Abhyankar. “We
create codes for all sorts of observations, but in this case, because it is
a public health emergency, we worked with the appropriate authorities to
make the code much more quickly.”

Abhyankar says with more complete tracking, health leaders can study the
virus and create strategies to address and contain the outbreak.

This is not the first time the health information technology has been used.
The Regenstrief team also created codes during the Zika and SARS outbreaks.
The LOINC coding system contains more than 92,000 terms.